Uncivil Souls
by Khevsureti
Summary: A survival story set in City 17 that builds on Valve's detailed setting with my own interpretation and imagination. No familiar characters, and strives for realism and thoughtful worldbuilding. Rated M for violence/language. Working Title. 1st Draft.
1. Chapter 1

From his perch on the third floor fire escape, Miljan Nedić could just pick out the sound of the second-past-noon siren. It wafted through the thick summer air that lolled about above City 17's rooftops, a moody wail pilfered from an old world police car. It was humid even at this height, where the sound carried clearest. It was so oppressively muggy, in fact, that Miljan was surprised it did not rain where the sky was punctured by the gabled turrets, ornate dormers and tilting television antennae. The siren's message (that it was now two soundings, or 288 minutes, past noon, as per base-ten Combine timekeeping) drifted off eastwards, to reverberate from the rank of towering apartment blocks that stood near the port facilities, crumbling. As usual, the gigantic speaker nestled somewhere in the gleaming ribs of the citadel let out a metallic squeal as it was retracted.

Miljan pulled the concealing trash bag tighter about himself and peered through the metal grating into the dusty street below. Like clockwork (and it was clockwork), his prey emerged from the an alleyway just as the siren died away. The scanner let out a faint noise like an electronic pigeon and began to float up from street-level towards Miljan's platform. The changing of the guard had sounded, and its patrol for that 144 minute hour was over.

Just as it had on three previous occasions, the whirring drone passed above the fire escape and headed west over the red tile roof, just skimming the surface of the terracotta. Miljan threw off his plastic cloak and followed the instant the camera was pointed away, clambering up by the drainpipe with practiced ease. He had thirteen paces to catch up and make the kill, or else the unwitting chase would dive down into the tree-choked avenue on the far side of the building and make it back to its home power station. Miljan's sandals made soft rustling sounds on the treacherous surface as he closed the gap. Two more meters, and he would pick the right moment and to his broken socket wrench into the scanner's sparkling turbine, slam its lens into the clay, and cover it with the trash bag. Then Iskander would come up through the studio skylight and deliver the coup de grâce with the ice pick.

Wait, where the hell was Iskander? He should be watching from the—

—a crow swooped overhead, pursued by a trio of harrying sparrows. Their raucous calls mingled to create an unpleasant, novel sound, and a curious circuit flickered to life in the scanner's metal cranium. Brand new off the line and unused to the ways of the world, it pirouetted on its axis to identify this intriguing, possibly subversive sound, only to discover a large, ill-fed man wearing an automechanic's jumpsuit crouching in its line of sight. Miljan dropped, or rather flung, the wrench.

"Idi u _pi__ć_ku _mat—"_

_ Click._

The LED flashbulb left him perfectly blind for a number of seconds, in which he lost his footing and the wrench clattered into the gutter. When the specks and shadows cleared from his vision, the scanner was gone.

"Iskander? Iskander! Get up here, kurac!"

Fiberglass shrieked in protest and moments later an olive-skinned man in a bleached shirt appeared on the roof, blinking in the afternoon sun.

"There you are, Miljan. And kurac yourself. You missed it."

"Missed it? So what if I did, you Turkish fairy? You didn't even bring the spike to do for it with."

The pair spoke in uneasy English, running roughshod over consonants to communicate at a greater pace.

"I'm not a Turk—anyhow, I heard you botch the capture from down below. Not surprised."

"You _are_ a Turk. I know Turks, and you're damn well one today. 'Not surprised,' moy kurac..."

Iskander squatted by the edge of the roof and retrieved the wrench from the compost-filled gutter.

"_Ey_... let's get off his roof. What if the picture it snapped of you looks aggressive, and they review it?"

"Then," Miljan rose stiffly, "we're dead. But I don't I think I scared the shiny bugger."

"Good. Because they'd stalker me in a second. I'm not so old as you, and I don't smoke those awful fags."

"Feh! Five whole years younger."

"Five years is a long time in this town. You're practically my Serbian grandfather."

"Fine. You're a snotty little houndeye whelp. Give me the wrench so to crack you over the head with."

Iskander swung the wrench onto his shoulder and laughed.

"We just established that you can't hit anything with it, remember?"

"_Kurac._"

Miljan dropped down onto the concrete roof of the adjacent building and followed his friend through a shattered skylight. The room below was black as pitch to his sun-dazzled eyes.

"But I'm not surprised you missed the scanner," Iskander said from somewhere in the darkness. "They're tricky bastards. What are we up to now, eight?"

"Just seven. Seven times getting flashed and ending up with nothing but a souvenir photo. That's a lot of documentation. I feel like a goddamn... a goddamn..."

"Lingerie model. Not to worry, though. We'll catch one tomorrow."

"They don't patrol here tomorrow. We should go over to the cafe on the Prospekt; they poke around inside the deck there sometimes. Only problem, Darina Fucking Lechkova won't let us in without we bring her those nails we owe her. I wouldn't mind exposing that bitch's hideout to Civil Protection and tunneling in after they've sealed it up. Nice water main connection there."

The apartment about them was becoming visible. Four windows were boarded up, admitting thin rays of light that shone on the mixed glass shards and samizdat pamphlets decorating the floor. Iskander stooped and hefted his belongings—a Red Army satchel and a Civil Protection stun baton.

"Nah, the patrol schedules by the train station get all wonky in the afternoon, and I swear I smelled bullsquid eggs in the basement last time we were over there. I've got things to do with the garden, and you could get on Caban's good side by helping him seal his fermenting jars."

Miljan licked his lips.

"How much water is left in the jug, though?"

"A liter? Two liters?"

"Then I don't know about you, Iska, but I've had a thirst hangover for two days. We need to run that pump and get the rest of the water from the fire station cistern, or I'm going to give up and drink Dr. Breen's drugged piss. And then I'll really forget you aren't a Turk. We need that fucking—"

"—scanner battery to power the pump and the filtration, yes, I know." Iskander walked towards the stairs, gesturing his friend to follow. Miljan didn't move.

"Iskander. Give me the water."

"...Just drink half a liter."

"Who's measuring? Give me the jug."

Iskander paused for a moment, then tensely placed the plastic carton on the third step and continued on down the murky staircase. The second floor was stacked waist-high with boxes of rotting books, and at ground level the exits were blocked in with brick. He halted at the edge of a jagged hole cut into the tile floor and peered down. The roof of a van was just visible nine meters below in a subterranean parking garage. Miljan emerged from the dark shaft that was the staircase a moment later, wiping precious water from his beard.

"Much obliged, Iska. Listen though, we need to power up that rig, even if we don't catch a scanner today." He lowered his voice. "I think you should sap the juice from your baton, there."

Iskander turned.

"Be fucked if I'll... I'm not going to go back to trusting a damn knife if we get nabbed by the CPs." For a moment the two stared at each other, faces studiously blank.

"Anyways," he continued, "we can run the generator for power. There's other fuel besides petrol and I think the patch you put on the gasket will hold."

"Where is there other fuel?"

They both knelt by the opening and began to creep downwards, using rebars as footholds.

"The plant. ...Maybe."

"The plant?" Miljan dropped onto the roof of the van with a reverberating crash and shouted back up at the hole, "We picked that place over pretty clean, no?"

His companion's satchel came hurtling out of the darkness and landed on his fingers.

"U pićku—"

"There's—"

"...materinu!"

"...another couple of factory annexes we didn't check across the street... Miljan, get off the damn car so I can get down. There should be some charcoal down in the furnaces, and we can run that through the gasifier."

"Christ, that's a lot of work for some generator fuel..."

Iskander emerged from the ceiling, hung for a moment, then slid awkwardly down the windshield of the van.

"If you want to drink Combine water, that's your business. Just remember that Serbs don't have too many brain cells to begin with."

"Go fuck a eunuch, Mustafa. I'll meet you at the steam junction head tomorrow, since you need my wheelbarrow anyway."

"How early can you be there?"

"Three o'clock, I mean three sirens after midnight."

"Good enough. If we can get a few gallons of fuel, we'll have clean water for months. No sewage, no rat shit, no poison rain..."

"No radiation. Did Roman ever get his hair back?"

"Roman's dead."

"Jesus." Miljan ran his hands across his scalp and wiped them on his jumpsuit. "What a way to go."

"Not from the radiation."

"Not the radi—did the CPs bust up his place? That gramophone was always whining."

"He choked on a potato spud."

"You're fucking kidding me."

Iskander shook his head.

"This where you get off," he said, pointing at a manhole cover spray-painted with a yellow lambda. "I'm taking the west drains to the garden. Remember, meet you tomorrow, two before noon."

"Two before noon."

They parted ways, creeping along through the network of sewer pipes and broken-into cellars that was the City 17 underground. There, water and sunlight trickled down from ruined places where Combine perimeter walls had penetrated the pavement, the toes of black metal feet that sometimes went walking. Swarms of rats hunted after the headcrabs, while the citizens who drank municipal water lived listlessly above, subject to amnesiac drugs and the scanners' constant photography. Iskander ran his tongue over his lips as he walked, thinking of the streams that emptied into the Black Sea where the mountains came close. In his cousin's photos, at least, the water ran clean.


	2. Chapter 2

Miljan was watching Drinkers. Sitting on a park bench in the barricaded courtyard of a housing block, he could see the street reflected in the large mirror nailed to a nearby tree. The summer rains, which were acidic and contaminated because the wind carried them in from east, had stripped its branches of leaves. The brittle few that remained dropped one of their number onto the mossy pavement every few minutes. Miljan crushed a few of them with his sandal and continued to stare at the passersby. A faded cosmetics magazine lay in his lap, but he had given up trying to record the frequency of scanner patrols and the CPs on their rounds. There was hardly any space to write between the advertisements, anyway.

The Drinkers had easy lives. Short-term memory loss, it turned out, resulted in considerable docility when it affected the entire (documented) population. Citizens of Breen's city could look to their Benefactors for all their basic needs, take a sip of drugged water, and let the days slip by in idleness. There was a lot to be said for a pastless and futureless existence. It allowed only the barest threads of a life, but when you couldn't remember the normal length of a day, each sunset had its own special novelty.

More ambitious citizens who wanted the finer things in life—new bedding, books, household items—had to scrounge up what they could, always taking pains to conceal their surplus possessions from confiscatory CPs and their stun batons. They would write the locations of stashes on the inside collars of their standard-issue denim shirts, lest they get thirsty and forget. Rations were sufficient, but only just, so that one had always to be on the hunt for more food in order to keep weight on. That was all the activity a Drinker was allowed, unless they were tapped as informers or menial workers by Civil Protection, which happened only occasionally.

Iskander and Miljan were refugees, non-citizens that had crept into the city at one point or another by crossing the polluted and Xen-haunted hinterlands and the expanding and retracting Apron wall. They could not live among the citizens, lest there be a Miscount, and they were not issued rations. Instead they traveled by the underground, charting and tunneling to reclaim living spaces and storage in structures far from Combine patrols. Now that they had adopted some sort of settled life in the margins, they were called fugees, drainrunners and other less savory things in a dozen languages. Iskander preferred the term creeps. They were distrusted and shunned by legal residents, but were valuable contacts for those who sought rare goods to trade for food and electricity.

A scanner slid lazily overhead. Their orange eyes read faces more easily than clothes, and nothing about Miljan's appearance was suspect. It was possible to move about the city mostly unmolested, so long as one did not draw the attention of the chronically bored CPs. Checkpoints were the main problem, with their ID cameras and alarm klaxons.

Miljan patted his grumbling stomach and envisioned the juvenile tomatoes in Iskander's rooftop garden. How nice it must be to have guaranteed meals everyday. It was easy, in fact, to shed fugee status and register as a full citizen. All one had to do was inform on another outlaw—or perhaps report a particularly heinous civil violation among the Drinkers—and take a pill. He and Iskander preferred the underground life, however. Death by bad luck was only slightly more probable, and their illegal existence granted them a certain élan. Every now and then Resistance couriers would take shots at him for using their tunnels, so as far as Miljan was concerned, he was a thoroughgoing City 17 hajduk.

"Hey! You over there! Moleman!"

Miljan almost fell off the bench. He spun around to see a white-haired man beckoning from a ground level window in the nearest building.

"Christ! How did you get—_what _the hell did you call me, you fucking Drinker?"

The newcomer didn't bat an eyelash; he was already agitated enough.

"Could you come give us a hand? It's urgent and—"

"_What_ did you call me?"

"Mole! Moleman, you dig in the ground like a mole. Okay?"

"Odjebi, kurac."

"Now listen, pal, we've caught a scanner!"

Miljan bolted to his feet. The magazine fell from the bench and opened to a page showcasing spray-on tan lotion for men. He covered it with his foot.

"No joke? Where is it?"

"My neighbors found it behind the apartments across the street. We don't know how to disable it and its noisier than—Hurry the hell up, or it'll fly away!"

Miljan swore again and began to climb in through the windowsill.

"Lead on, then. How did a bunch of sorry Yanks like you catch one, anyway?"

There were there too many damned Americans being shipped into the city these days.

"It caught itself, mostly."

They reached the end of a drafty hallway and turned a corner. There was a gaping hole in the wall where, judging by the tire tracks, an APC had smashed into the building. Civil Protection's monthly alcohol ration always made for a number of unpleasant, perilous, days.

"Huh. So much for this block, anyway. You Drinkers can just walk right in."

"They'll make us brick it back up, don't worry," the American said bitterly, and walked into the street. Miljan hung back out of habit and checked both ways along the road. Nothing but downed power lines and heat haze to the left, the Citadel framed between two houses to the right.

Hajduk and citizen darted down a trash-choked alleyway and through an empty lot filled with broken-down Ladas. They heard the sounds first, a cacaphony of metallic wailing punctuated by urgent chirps. The American turned the corner into a bare cul-de-sac of concrete and blankly staring windows.

"There it is. We can't figure out what to do with it."

Miljan scratched his head. The noisy distress calls were all coming from the scanner—as emotive as all Combine machines—that was careening around the confined space in irregular circles. It seemed to lack altitude control entirely, was listing to the right and could not stay on course for more than a few seconds. Two gypsy women were watching furtively from a doorway while another man chased the malfunctioning drone to and fro, ludicrously trying to snare it with a dogcatcher's net.

"Sranje! What the hell happened?"

"It zapped itself on an extra power line we rigged on the fourth floor," the old man answered, pointing towards the small rectangle of sky that was visible. "Then it fell down here and bounced around for a while. Do you know how to disable it?"

"That's the easy part. You have to catch it first."

The seemingly panicked automaton was snapping pictures wildly, and it appeared to have smashed its headlight. Taking care to conceal himself behind the wall, Miljan turned towards the women, who were watching impassively.

"Joj! Pićke! Do something useful. Throw some rocks at it or something!"

They looked at him momentarily and then vanished into the building's interior. He realized with consternation that they probably understood Serbo-Croation, and flung a few more epithets after them for good measure.

"Oh, give up!" Miljan growled at the man with the net. "Or else go find a bigger stick." The Drinker obeyed as if used to it and sprinted away, ducking to avoid the scanner's crazed trajectory. He returned moments later with a tire iron and offered it to Miljan.

"Nuh-uh, you do it."

To his surprise, the scrawny fellow ran nimbly up to the flying camera and fetched it a blow that made the whole yard resound. With an echoing crack, the chase staggered out of the air and bounced into the well of a casement window, It was still doggedly trying to move ahead, but trapped. Massaging the index finger that had once gotten caught in the gears of a scanner in a very similar situation, Miljan approached.

"Nice work. Now hand me that."

Pinning it down by the front panel, he jammed the metal bar into the workings of the turbine and sprang back. Sparks and grease vapor filled the air, followed by the sound of a large firecracker and a rain of shattered components. The aluminum window well was now hot to the touch, and Miljan used the tire iron to sift around inside.

"About time!"

He reached down and lifted out his prize—a large cylindric battery with translucent sides that gave off a faint blue glow. Grinning, he thought of Iskander's water pump. There was probably a hundred hours' worth of voltage in his hands, and no need to shovel charcoal.

"There! This here is the good stuff."

Both citizens were watching him closely; even the women had returned.

"That's our battery," the American said, jaw clenched.

"The hell it is! You ask me my help and then—what would you do with it anyway? You get free power for being good little roblje."

The second man spoke for the first time.

"I brought it down. It's ours..."

Miljan spat by way of response.

"Fine then, you fugee greaseball. Show him, Tsura."

From the doorway, one of the women rooted around in the pouch of her tartan shirt and pulled a pistol out by the barrel. Miljan froze. Where could that čiganski witch gotten herself a Makarov?

"Hokay, hokay, okay, Amerikanci, hold on a moment." He stood slowly, holding the battery as if it were a shield. "You don't need this so very much, and truth be told neither do I, but we should have a trade, yes?"

"You don't have anything to give, Ivan."

'Ivan?' Fucking Americans.

"That's where you're wrong! Look here." He turned his back, keeping his hands visible, and pulled a thin plastic pouch from the rear pocket of his boiler suit. Tossing it to the citizens, he grinned affably, or tried to.

"That's rare stuff there. UNICEF nutrient and vitamin gruel. You mix a teaspoon or so up with water and it'll keep you alive and kicking for a week. You could walk clear back to... Chicago, with it."

Their faces registered little interest, although at least the American was reading the label. His scanner-killing friend made an exasperated sound.

"You've got to be joking—"

"I swear it by your dead mother! I'm no Armenian; when have you ever known a Serb who could swindle worth a damn? Hey?"

"God, this must taste awful. We don't need any more food than what they give us for nothing."

Miljan's face suddenly brightened.

"Oh, but you will soon."

"What?"

"That scanner snapped pictures of all four of you, didn't it?"

"Tsura, just shoot him if he talks too much longer."

"You don't get what this means, do you? You sorry Drinker bastards, the only thing the Combine see right now is the four of you running around trying to destroy one of their scouts. I don't have to tell you what's going to happen to you."

The American blanched.

"You've all blown it. You can do whatever you want but I would be hitting the sewers right now. And that little miracle bag could probably feed all four of you clear to the Apron and through the badlands to the nearest Resistance outpost. Really, you're lucky you found me."

He sensed victory, but the gypsy with the gun appeared unmoved. That was, to say the least, the deciding factor. Then the thrice-blessed, darling institution that was Civil Protection saw fit to sound a noisy alarm at one of their checkpoints. All four citizens looked towards the alleyway in alarm.

"Okay! We'll do the trade, but please, show us how to get to the Underground Railroad."

"The what?"

"Station 15 is the closest, but there's half a dozen checkpoints on the way."

Miljan wrapped the battery in a handkerchief and looked up to see if the handgun was lowered yet.

"Sorry, narodni, but that's not my area of expertise. I stay far away from those goons. You'll have to squirrel away somewhere and find out where to go from someone else. This Yankee here found my naptime spot in the courtyard, so maybe you can all hide in there."

Now the two men looked ready to bolt, and the women vanished from the doorway again. Suddenly, there was no gun in the equation. Miljan cradled his newest possession lovingly, and gave the American a pat on the shoulder as he walked towards the sunny street.


	3. Chapter 3

Iskander looked at the curtains of sagging canvas and groaned. Two meters of iron ladder had rusted loose from the factory wall and torn a long gash in the camouflage covering of the passageway connecting the main structure to the annex where his garden was. One of City 17's Stalinist industrial complexes, the surrounding area was choked with fences and rubble at ground level, with high walls separating it from the highways and rail arteries outside. Civil Protection never took the trouble to look in on the cluster of hulking, vine-covered buildings, which meant that scanners flew over instead, several times a day. It was incredibly dangerous to dart from depot to depot when a drone hanging noiselessly in the sun could identify a trespasser (and being spotted in unpoliced areas could result in anything from a beating to summary execution) from hundreds of meters away. Iskander had spent weeks rigging a series of covered routes between buildings, mostly trenches and catwalks covered in cloth, plastic and plywood. It was worth it for the storage and seclusion, not to mention the imitation greenhouse where he and Miljan grew the bulk of their food. The scanners saw nothing amiss in his work, once it was completed. They could pick out minute details in a person's face or dress, but appeared incapable of noticing the discrepancy between a ramshackle construction held together with dead telephone wires and the cinderblocks of a foundry.

Iskander had heard that hard copies of scanner snapshots were sometimes presented to prisoners under interrogation in order to encourage cooperation, but he had never seen any evidence of humans controlling or monitoring the flying cameras remotely. (Otherwise several appallingly rude graffiti messages of his would have been removed, instead of ignored.) Miljan believed that Breen was the only human to inhabit the entire Citadel, and maybe he was right.

This particular tunnel consisted of canvas supported by a frame of lead pipes, but now there was a hole right in the northern side of it. Built on top of a slanted chute that was plugged by a mass of slag too thick to dig through, the concealing pavilion had taken an especially great effort to build. Worse, the canvas was coated in dust that made him sneeze uncontrollably, and scanners had audio feeds.. Miljan would have to come back and sew up the damage sometime.

Iskander sighed and scrambled up the roof of the chute, ridges in the corrugated tin providing good handholds. This building was old and squat, and his bridge led into the attic. The ceiling was mostly warped timber, so the interior was shot through with rays of light that tilted in from a dozen angles. His garden was only a few months old, but it was already his largest and most successful by far. He and Miljan maintained a collection of small plots on rooftops and balconies, but the yields were too small because hiding the cultivation from CPs, scanners and citizens limited their options. After bludgeoning its den of houndeyes to death, the factory loft had provided the perfect alternative. The key ingredient was the opening in the flat portion of the ceiling, fifteen meters square, that had once been entirely framed over by panels of glass. Iskander had almost broken a leg replacing the missing panes with white plastic trash bags while dangling on two lengths of chain. He trusted the dirty glass that remained to admit sunlight and not surveillance, and it had worked. After hauling several hundred pounds of bone-scattered compost from the neighboring slaughterhouse using a handcrank-powered dumbwaiter, they had plenty of soil. Now beans and tomatoes grew on steel trellises, with carrots below. Rainwater ran into the garden from redirected gutters, each of which had a precious filter (originally destined for some third world country) in it. Iskander didn't think that the toxins from the more noxious weather patterns would be passed on to the produce, but it was best not to risk it. Contamination through careless foraging was probably one of the easiest ways to die, although Miljan kept adding new possibilities to the list.

There was weeding to do, but the dangerous hike from the garage beneath their failed scanner ambush had left him fatigued. That quarter-kilometer stretch of open drainage canal took years off his life every time he traversed it, but it was the only open route ever since the clan of Austrians living in the apartments alongside had gotten crabbed two weeks earlier. Such was life on the outskirts. Iskander slid his back down the length of a timber post that had been trucked in from the Carpathians sixty years ago. Reaching the floor, he closed his eyes. It was incredibly tranquil up here, even though he knew that his attic was considerably less safe than a closet in the city center. He ought to read about peas, really. There was the gardening handbook on the stool, printed in Russian with little diagrams peopled by smiling Soviet children and babushkas.

Books had saved his sanity. In the early days, when the hunting and killing was still in full swing and the horizon always burned, he had fled Trabzon with with his grown-up cousin and young nieces. The Seven Hours War concluded just after his fifth birthday, but he remembered nothing of his life before that point except a small, dark room that smelled of cloves and mulberries. Picking their way west through the ruin that was Anatolia, Iskander could never recall speaking. Some of his nieces would cry at night, but only softly, for the human race had encountered the one force capable of awing infants into silence. They all grew up in a mine shaft on one side (or maybe the other) of the Dardanelles, of which Iskander recalled only grinding torment under florescent lights. His salvation came when he wormed his way into the owner's library and set about decoding. Turkish first (there were no books in his native language, which no one here had heard of in any case), then the painful siege of Russian under his cousin's uncertain tutelage and a war of attrition with English. Most of the books he came across dealt the irrelevancies of a world long vanished, but others provided hints of where he came from, his family, his people and his species. That knowledge carried him through the crisis of his teenage years and stayed with him after the predictable fate of his relatives, leaving him equipped with tools of incalculable value. His prowess gave him a certain advantage over Miljan, who was older and otherwise intimidating in his experience of the old world. Miljan could speak, but not read, languages beside his own, and from time to time relied on Iskander to take him back to the past he so painfully remembered. The Serb had not let him rest until he had succeeded in deciphering a Ukrainian language guide to Yugoslavia.

Because of the haze that was his early childhood, Iskander belonged more to the last generation, the children of the apocalypse. He had a few more years than the youngest human beings living, a generation compressed into a few bare years by the remaking of the world at the hands of dark matter. These final specimens of the human race were now well past their adolescence, and were at times an entirely differential organism from the survivors who remembered an independent Earth. Most the antebellum population had only limited memories, like Miljan. It was difficult to find anyone who had fully matured in the days before portals rolled back the sky, for the elderly did not fare well under the Combine. The range of the human race had been narrowed along with the scope of its future.

There was still variation to be found in the subject organism, however. Many citizens clung to old national and ethnic labels, often to the bewilderment of their younger counterparts. There were Drinkers and fugees, rebels sometimes, with their technocrat rulers, and stories of feral people living far from the cities. Miljan had also relayed rumors of migrating bands of paramilitaries; ex-Spetsnaz and the like who knew how to fight better than how to live. Years had passed since the world had last been a battlefield. On the day the Scourging was finished, the face of a man with a kindly white beard flickered onto television screens fried by electromagnetism. Breen's voice echoed from car radios and loudspeakers; his face was projected onto the surface of the moon. Then the relief and consolidation of the survivors commenced, and those cities that had inexplicably survived were renamed. They welcomed the flagging refugees that trudged towards them highways and toll roads, bicycle spokes of humanity converging through a sea of ash. The Suppression Field went up, snuffing out tomorrow with an epidemic of miscarriages. Citizenship in Earth was offered, and populations were relocated wholesale. Entire countries went walking, usually in different directions, and now City 17 was as diverse as any old world metropolis, home to people from all over Europe, the Mediterranean and lately the Americas.

Most of them were citizens. There were thousands of them, all living useless, drug-addled lives with the Combine's tentative permission. He saw them daily, walking around with their spines wound up in a perpetual cringe, as if the sparkling baton was always inches away. Perhaps one in three would immediately report a stranger and cash in the proffered ration coupon. Another third spent their days vainly pining after the Resistance (and some of these tried at one point or another to flee). The rest did not do much of anything at all. Miljan had more sympathy for them than Iskander, for he knew what it was to be comfortable and safe. He remembered how seductive it was to fall back into certainty and be coddled.

Miljan came from the Serbian Krajina in Croatia, whose second destruction he had survived through the grit and stubbornness of his grandmother. It had been her mission to ensure that her ten-year-old charge never forgot where he came from, and Iskander envied him the inheritance. Miljan had been part of a society, a nation. His understanding of the world as it had been and should be stemmed from a precious decade of normal, easy life. Iskander thought it well worth the pain of remembrance, for in his experience, ignorance was rarely bliss.

Ignorance was what the Drinkers had. Groups of them were parceled out to various apartment buildings, usually with no apparent rationale behind the assignments. Housing allotment was, however, mandatory and permanent. 'Censuses' were taken at mostly random times each week, and punishment for absences could be collective. So they were stuck, going nowhere and knowing little. There was regular contact between the artificial communities on different city blocks, but no news of the wider world and few local topics worth talking about. On trade visits, Miljan was frequently incredulous at the lack of social patterns that constituted so much of daily life. Born in the Balkans, the continent he knew was one where old men sat on benches and young men lounged on the rails of bridges, retiring to a well-lit room with a table and drinks at night. When loitering outside was prohibited and the smallest gathering was suspect, the human race was almost unrecognizable to him.

Perhaps it was much easier after all to have never lived a normal life. Iskander was free of that burden, free to carelessly pick over the written remnants of his species. He was like the young people in the residence blocks, the ones who didn't understand the purpose of a common room, who had strange new ideas on how to organize living space in their native environment. 'Honestly,' Miljan said once, eyes wide, 'all these young people are exactly like gypsies. Pale little Belgian gypsies.' Such generational differences sometimes caused domestic power struggles, as did tribal disputes, yet such things alone rarely got out of hand. There were almost no families anymore, by attrition and by design, so there was little impetus to keep conflicts going, and all national claims were moot, except among the most reticent. What really lay behind the unrest of apartment life, in Iskander's opinion, was incessant sexual frustration. He had never read Freud, only a highly critical response to his work by a British columnist with a penchant for folksy language. He was certain, however that the dead German's (Was Austria a German province?) flawed theories were much more useful when applied to this simple world, where, as Miljan put it, CPs made you stand at attention but nothing else ever could. The sexual politics of Combine society were insane, the Serb often asserted, albeit in other words.

Iskander realized that he had been dozing. Shadows cast by an iron window grating had kept one eye in sun and one in shade, alternating as the afternoon gave way to evening. So much for gardening, anyway. Worse, his semi-lucid mind had been wandering for quite some time. The very worst ideas came from that sort of state, for all manner of harebrained schemes were eminently possible in the forgiving world of a dreamscape. An entire morning had once passed before he realized that his cousin was not, in fact, alive and could not be smuggled into the city using the nonexistent Combine postal system.

Iskander stood and pressed his palms into hollow of his stiff back. That roof support had been a terrible place to fall asleep. Walking over to where the moldy ceiling planks slanted inwards, he removed a canvas cover and stuck his head outside. Judging by the sun, the second-to-last siren would be sounding soon, equivalent to 19:12 human time, and Miljan would signal if he wanted to meet up that night. Hopefully he would, meaning that there was something productive to, some gain to be made. Getting out of the factory complex wouldn't be so hard, either. After such a hot day, walking on a metal or tarmac surface was enough to be invisible to the scanners' rudimentary infared detectors.

The Combine rang their bell a few minutes later. Iskander always seemed to wake up right before a sounding, as if the schedule was etched into his brain.

There, there it was. A building on the horizon was winking at him. Using a polished piece of brass and the last rays of the sun, Miljan was standing inside the dome of an observatory two kilometers distant, flashing Morse code to the southwest.

"F...ound one, ba—battery! Hell, yes!"

Scooping up his satchel, Iskander ran out of the room and slid down the roof of the chute. Dust trailed out behind him like exhaust, but he did not sneeze.


	4. Chapter 4

"So who are these bastards, then?" Painful pinpricks darted through Iskander's fingertips, which were trembling under the weight of the barrel they carried between them.

"The buyers? They're this lot of—"

"Hold on, hold on, I—need to put this down a minute."

"I was hoping you'd say that."

They maneuvered the blue plastic cylinder towards the wall of the service tunnel. Thirty liters of untainted water sloshed around inside, almost overturning their burden, but they managed to bring it to rest on a large iron pipe. Miljan sagged against the grimy concrete.

"You could have asked to stop first, you know," his companion observed.

"Eh. And you could have brought the tool kit, and we could still be using the box cart, carrier, whatever thing you call it."

"Can't believe the wheel just popped right fucking off." Iskander waggled his aching fingers. "Don't let us forget to pick it up on the way back."

"Hmmn. Anyways, like you asked, the buyers are a bunch of refugees, ex-nomads, really. They used to live in the wilderness somewhere, but ran out of hidey-holes and medical supplies."

Iskander gestured for Miljan to pick up the barrel again, and they both hefted it down the passageway.

"They had some sort of goddamn democracy going, so they voted to surrender. Civil Protection is keeping them together for the time being, but that'll change. They're all holed up in a school building."

"And that's pretty close now? This sucker is heavy enough..."

"One more bend up ahead, I think—" Miljan lurched as his right foot landed on a stray manhole cover and slid.

"Shit!"

"I'm fine, fine. Tilt it back towards you a little, Iska."

"So they want clean water then?"

"Aye. Just for the folks in charge. They must be pretty damn enterprising to have gotten word out to so fast, and across the warehouses too. I suppose they want to keep those wits about them a little longer. And you know what they're paying in? Meat."

"You're fucking with me!"

"Venison jerky. That battery is already paying its dividends. Go'bless it and the little fried bugger it flew in on."

"Carry this thing faster, Miljan. I haven't had meat all year."

"Well, you—"

"Pigeons don't count."

"Amen, brother."

They rounded a corner and the barrel collided with the protective cage of a red light bulb. The sound ricocheted from one wall to the other until it bounced into the distance and was lost. Miljan winced.

"Well, we're here. And now they know we're coming, too."

A dozen more awkward, cramped steps and they set the barrel down on a pile of broken cinderblocks.

"What is that up there?" Iskander asked, peering into the dark cavity that stretched upwards from where the ceiling had caved in.

"Elevator shaft. Are they even waiting for us..."

"Ah, I see the hatch now. One of your excavations?"

"No, shitty Soviet heap fell apart on its own. Although this is near where I lived when I first came here." Miljan cupped his hand to his mouth. "Alo up there! We brought the water. Vody!"

The echoes died away to nothing.

"For Christ's..." He picked up a piece of cement and hurled it underhand. _Clang. _Iskander found a snapped rebar and joined in.

"They must hear this. They're from the badlands; they have to be paranoid to stay alive. How did you get across the apron, anyhow?"

"I climbed," Miljan answered. "Two years ago, about."

"Shit! You climbed, you bastard? You must have been desperate. Some smugglers living in a dam down south showed me a drainage canal that can get you through easily. That was after I jumped on a train and almost got pancaked on one of those particle barriers."

A square of bright light appeared above them with a metallic screech.

"There they are. You up there! We have your water but its heavy as my friend's mother and we need some sort of hoist!"

Except for some noncommittal-sounding noises, there was no response from above. Miljan sighed.

"Stay here and handle the rope when it comes down. I'm going to climb up and sort them out. You'd better let me have your stun stick. Our friend Avila has given us bad contacts before."

After a moment's hesitation, Iskander handed over his weapon. The light coming down the shaft revealed a ladder that could just be reached by standing on the barrel. The rungs complained and shifted beneath him, but Miljan soon gained the second floor landing, passing the gear motors and the closed ground level doors. A gaunt man in overalls awaited him, grinning nervously.

"Sveiki, sveiki."

"Da, sweki. Do you have a rope? We need a rope. And I want to see your man with the payment too."

Miljan received only a blank look.

"Ruskii?" he inquired.

The man shook his head. Fucking Lithuanians.

"Ne Ruskii?" he repeated incredulously. "Deutsch? No?" Miljan bit his lip and looked around the bare, flaking corridor, but there was no one else in sight. "Polysk?"

"Tak, tak, oczywiście."

"Okay... Polysk z—zly, but okay. Potrz-zebować sznur, sznur... lina! Lina do woda. Woda przenieść do góry." Miljan gestured as best he could, in the likely event that 'rope to water' would be misinterpreted. The Lithuanian seemed to comprehend, however, and pointed at a nearby staircase.

"Szef, płatność," he said, very slowly.

"Szef, płatność. Tak, dziękuję." Miljan leaned into the elevator shaft. "Ahoj, Iskander! I think they'll be lowering a rope down soon. I'm going to go find the pay, so come to the third floor when you're done."

"Fine, but I'll leave it to them to pull the damn thing up. Don't get us ripped off."

The Serb shrugged and made his way upstairs. The decaying building was the epitome of the dreary old institution, with flecks of paint and broken tile rustling beneath every footfall. With half a dozen steps to go, he smelled paradise. The third story was a dormitory crammed with bunk beds, and the air was thick with cigarette smoke. Miljan stood in the wide doorway, preferring to breathe deeply rather than acknowledge the room full of people. Where had the bastards found those?

"Can we help you?" asked a severe-looking man on the opposite side of the room. He was heavily-bearded and dressed rather theatrically in an overcoat. A stocky woman with close-cropped hair sat at his side. Miljan noticed the empty holster on her thigh and flicked his eyes back and forth. Two dozen others returned the glance from different points around the room.

"You could return the favor, sure. How about a smoke, first?"

The seated woman made as if to stamp her foot, but subsided and shot a look at someone in the next room.

"And exactly who—"

"Apologies! Apologies, I thought I had been announced. I'm the fellow d'Avila referred you to. I've brought the water?"

"Of course, of course. Naturally, it would be you. I'm Barrett, consul. Come sit down." He snapped his fingers and said to no one in particular, "Somebody get this guy a cigarette." The short-haired woman stood and left the room, so Miljan took her seat. A smoldering joint appeared at his ear, and he took it without looking back.

"So you've brought us water, then?"

"That's right. Thirty liters of it, and good stuff at that. Tastes like an ice-cold mountain stream with deer pissing in it and everything. Been drinking it myself these past days."

"Well that's commendable, friend..."

"Miljan Nedić. 'Skander, my associate, is getting it hoisted up the elevator shaft right now. And Avila told me that you had meat."

Barrett leaned back in his chair, much of his face disappearing behind his beard. That woman was standing at the end of the hallway to the right, having a hushed argument with an African man in fatigues.

"That we do... Establishing the exchange rate may require some creative thinking, however."

Miljan puffed a stream of smoke at the ceiling.

"Not to worry. I expect I'll have to do my best to make you understand just how hard it is to get untainted drink in this city. Why, two Americans and a pair of gypsies had their citizenship revoked just to get hold of this much. And maybe you think you can operate well enough drinking the funny stuff. How long were you out in the bush, anyway?"

"We counted more winters than I care to remember. Two dozen of us, and plenty of them women, too. It all caught up with us, in the end. Do you think the, what do you call 'em, the Combine, will split us up?"

"Almost certainly. Say, I don't see any women." Surely there were about two dozen men already in sight? Most of them seemed rough-hewn and grim enough to look the part. "All of these are your people?"

Barrett paused.

"Aye, and the rest are downstairs. But how does seven kilos of jerky sound?"

"Seven kilos... Honestly, it's all relative in this sort of thing. How much do you have?"

"That's all of it, that we still have packaged, anyway."

Not for the first time, Miljan wished that he had Iskander's ability to detect lies. To make it worse, his stomach was calling to him.

"All of it?" He tried and failed to hide his surprise. "Well, that's fair. We'll be all settled up and on our way if my friend ever gets the damn thing up here. Do you have it stored or something?"

Barrett jabbed his thumb at the crate he was resting his booted feet on.

"But come, Nedić, and we'll see how they are doing with the water. How did you bring it? A barrel lugged all this way?"

"It's plastic."

They stood and walked out of the room. There were four people gathered around the elevator now, wrestling with a stiff fire hose.

"You had no rope?" Barrett ventured.

"And we tried electrical wire but it snapped," came the response. Miljan rolled his eyes discreetly. Iskander's voice could be heard from below, cursing someone for a damn degenerate. His host began to move on, and Miljan followed him to a dirt-tinted window.

"They'll sort it out. Tell me, Nedić, what is going to happen to my people?"

"Your people?" He flicked his cigarette onto the dusty sill.

"I'm their consul, you see. Chosen by majority. I've heard some things from the—nevermind, what do you think?"

"Well..." Miljan looked out at the maze of unfinished highway ramps and overpasses. A light drizzle was wetting the city to the north. "It's unusual for them to keep you all out here, so far as I know. And you needn't fear the worst, I don't think. If they wanted you for stalkers they would have done it at once. No, more likely Civil Protection will pick your people over for informants and good workers. It's the end of your little commune, safe to say."

Barrett's shoulders sagged.

"It may still be for the best... I tried to fight the others as long as I could, but there was no staying them, in the end. Maybe they were right. We were getting to the end of our rope." He fixed the Serb with a stare. "You don't know what it's like out there."

"I do. I came of age 'out there.'"

"Your pardon. Well, now it's citizenship in Breen's city for us. _Feh,_ I wonder if it wouldn't be better for me to join you and your friend there, and find my own water."

"Maybe," Miljan answered stiffly.

"I'm not going to be here when they come to relocate us, in any event. My nephew and I are taking your water and living under the radar for a while."

The short-haired woman was back again, standing by the stairs with arms crossed and casting Barrett a significant look. The water barrel rolled bodily onto the second floor with a crash, a clang, and a chorus of grunts and victorious oaths.

"There you have it, Nedić. Your pardon, and a pleasure doing business with you." He followed the woman into a side room. She seemed to have rather too much influence over the supposed leader, yet they did not act at all familiar with each other. Iskander emerged from the elevator and joined Miljan at the window.

"That fire hose give you trouble, Iska? Don't tell me they really tried to use a bit of wire to lift thirty kilos—"

"Shut up a minute, Miljan." Iskander steered him away from the crowd near the barrel and lowered his voice. "These people have guns. I saw an automatic fall out of this fellow's bag when we got the water up."

"So, who's worried? Their boss, Barrett, seems pretty reasonable, and it makes sense for them to be armed, with them in from the wild."

"But they're still armed _after_ you said they surrendered to the Combine," Iskander whispered. "And who goes hunting with a submachine gun?"

A group of women emerged from the stairs, carrying mattresses. Surely that made more than two dozen? Miljan glanced at the elevator and let his suspicions take their fair share.

"Okay. Maybe you're right. You stay here and I'll go get the crate. Then we'll leave."

"Don't stick around to haggle."

"Already taken care of."

The loudspeaker system let out a faint blip. By time Miljan reached the crate of provisions on the third floor, it was playing static. He glanced out the window. Nothing, nothing, probably nothing, but hurry, hurry, slowly.

The siren came first: three short blasts. There was the sound of electric motors revving, and APCs slid out from concealment on the street outside. Miljan began to curse, but a cold, metallic female voice cut him off.

_"Attention. Citizens."_ The Combine Dispatcher's pronouncements floated in from nowhere as they always did, freezing the muscles in his neck even as his stomach flared into churning heat.

"Shitshitshitshitshit—"

_"Please assume compliance-mandate position. And prepare for census audit. Protection, teams. Prepare, titration of non-civic populace and, effect sub-level restrictions."_

The room was full of noise, scanners suddenly humming at every window. Most people were looking around in unease and confusion, but a few of the men suddenly produced handheld radios and ran in different directions. Miljan cradled the box of meat and pounded down the stairs. Iskander met him at the bottom. There was a sound in the corridor like a dozen screeching bandsaws, or a cloud of insects.

"This is bad, bad real—they've caught us, Iskander! Get in the—"

"Hey! Drop the damn meat; the elevator's full of Hacks!"

Miljan froze.

"They're just hovering down there, all in the sewer pipe, blinking their fucking lights at me."

"Christ! Do you have any ideas?"

"I was going to ask you that. This one could turn out to..."

Doors slammed on the floor below, and guttural radio chatter echoed up the staircase. Scanners flashed at them constantly, like strobe lights, and the Dispatcher droned on outside.

"Okay, Iska, at least let's go up with the others. Maybe they won't check everyone, and they'll just stick us in an apartment somewhere." Miljan dropped the crate into the elevator shaft, aiming for the deadly swarm of dancing red lights, and turned towards the stairs. He spent the next few meters rifling through his memories of the last few years, trying to remember any time his face may have been photographed in connection with some violation. It was an agonizing task, trying to decide whether he would live or die. And what if only one of them was caught?

"Everyone stay on the bunks! Leave your luggage on the floor. Wartman! Is everyone here? Good, get them to stay calm and wait for the police." Barrett was threading his way between the rows of bunks. He kept casting looks at the armored vehicles parked outside. The short-haired woman and the African were nowhere to be seen.

"Nedić! Would you and your friend kindly get the hell out of here? We've made the trade, now you can scram, along with our other guests."

"There's no way out." Other guests? What had they gotten themselves in the middle of? "We need to mix in with your people."

Barrett was about to protest when the screech of leather boots on tile interrupted him. Three Civil Protection officers appeared at the bottom of the stairs, holding their batons with sinister nonchalance. Iskander disappeared from the threshold and sat down on a mattress, while Miljan shrank against the metal handrail and tried to avoid meeting the leer of their eyeless white masks.

"Don't move, citizens." Their voices emerged distorted and mechanical from the gas filters on their helmets. With a chuckle and a burst of radio static, the rightmost officer reached out and touched the railing with his stun stick. The current flung Miljan up the stairs, slamming his knees into the edge and flipping him forward. He landed with electricity singing painfully in his lower teeth. Iskander's own stun stick was concealed in the interior of his right pant leg, and he realized that it created a very clear silhouette.

"I said don't move."

There was absolute silence in the room as City 17's Metropolitan Police entered the dormitory. Barrett was standing in front of the entrance, his spine completely rigid, staring through the wall. A pair of CPs walked around him and positioned themselves near the two exits.

"Units five secondary clear the hallway. Perform bioptic, expunge aaand re-port. You, citizen." The third officer jabbed Barrett with his finger. "Is this everyone?"

Barrett nodded stiffly.

"You look like an ape. You are filth. Citizen, health inspection, stick out your tongue."

For a moment Miljan worried that Barret wouldn't obey, that he would balk at such a bizarre command. He did not balk, however, and remained miraculously still as the masked quisling tapped his tongue with the baton. There was a sound like a circuit blowing out, and Barrett snapped backwards into a bedpost and lay still.

"Stay where you are, citizens." The CP led two more officers out of the room and down the hallway. There were more of them on the stairs, but for a moment the dormitory was unobserved. Iskander slid out of the bunk and onto the floor next to where his friend lay.

"Give me the stick," he hissed.

"And then what? They'll be back in here in half a second and then what will you do with it?" The others heard their whispering and looked over. "I hope this lot doesn't decide to cooperate with the law. Listen, Iska, there're other people in the building. I think they're the ones with the guns."

Iskander glanced at the hall and gathered his legs under him. The scanners had withdrawn slightly, and the Dispatcher was silent as he crawled away from the stairs. Only the droning manhacks and the boots of the CPs could be heard. He crept to the opposite side of the room and stuck his head into the passageway. Miljan shifted his weight and tried to resecure the weapon concealed beneath his knee.

Suddenly a chorus of sharp clicks, like a too-loud typewriter, rattled down the hall. Iskander jerked away from the opening and sprinted back into the room, eyes wide. Somewhere bits of plaster were shattering on the floor.

"What was that? What happened?" There were unidentifiable muffled noises and loud voices now.

"They just splattered his brains all over the wall, that's what!"

"His—what? Who?"

"Everybody get down!" Iskander roared.

For an endless period of two and a half heartbeats, nothing happened. Then what sounded like an entire platoon of machinegunners opened up in the other room. Three white fountains of pulverized masonry splashed out from the wall, and stray rounds skittered and whined about the room, glancing off the metal bed posts. The muzzle blasts were simultaneous and continuous; bottled up in the confined space they were painfully loud. Dust was falling from the ceiling, and there was blood all over the mattress by the door. Barrett was still unconscious.

All at once it stopped. Several radios were keening, just like the ringing in Miljan's ears, and were soon lost in static. The Dispatcher reported it all in even, unhurried tones while panicked, garbled radio chatter echoed up the stairwell. More shooting, and from the window they could see a scanner go down, automatic fire crumpling its steel panels and disintegrating the optics.

"Now will you get out the damn stun stick?"

As Miljan tore at his pant leg a CP appeared in the hall, backpedaling fast, with both hands on his sidearm. He squeezed off three shots before a hail of gunfire puckered his flak vest in a dozen places and spat blood out the other side. A few people cheered.

_"Officer down at, transit artery, seven. Lost contact with Protection team, five-two."_

Two armed men darted in the room, wielding a shortened Kalashnikov and an old Yugoslav submachine gun between them.

"Get ready to move, people! We're fighting our way down to the sewer, so follow us on our say so!"

"It's the fucking Resistance," Iskander hissed.

"Just our luck, Iska. Try to get to that CP and grab his pistol if you can. Then we'll follow them down to the tunnel and run in the opposite direction."

Two more officers appeared at the top of the stairs. The first had his helmet blown off along with part of his skull, and the second ducked back out of sight. Immediately, a torrent of rifle rounds smacked into to the floor at the top of the stairs, spraying tile and dust a meter high. The incoming fire deafened Miljan again, and as he crawled away from the impacts a chunk of something struck him in the mouth. Part of his front tooth was stuck to the back of his tongue; he could feel the jagged edge.

The stun baton was rolling around on the floor now, and Iskander slid it towards the center of the room with his outstretched leg.

"Grab that!" he shouted at his partner, and then ran back towards the hallway in a crouch. The rebels were still shooting away bits of the ceiling every few seconds, and more jackboots were screeching and stomping on the landing one story down. Iskander ducked below the chattering gun barrels and slid on the linoleum threshold, colliding with the dead CP. There was a hot shell casing inside his collar and he shook violently until it rolled down his spine and out his shirt tail.

"Is that Drinker hit?"

He looked up. The short-haired woman was trotting down the hall, flanked by two more fighters. Iskander shook his head and eyed the firearm in her hands, a black automatic with a menacing, professional appearance.

"Ah. You weren't going for that there, were you?" She nodded her head at the floor. He looked down and saw that his right hand rested near the dead officer's pistol. His other hand was pressing down on the dark flak vest, making purpling fluid bubble up from the gunshot wounds and pool in the dimples made by his palm.

"Euyugh—Ieso! _Shit!_" He snapped his reddened hand away, shaking.

"Yeah, it is shit," the woman observed. "Can you use that gun?"

Iskander hesitated, trying to wipe his hand on the softer fabric of the CP's sleeve.

"No? Then I'll take it." She kicked the pistol to the side and spun on her heel. "Ismail! We're pushing on downstairs, so look alive!"

In the other room, Miljan sank against the side of a bunk. Someone was hiding under the covers, which were dusted by chunks of plaster shot free from the wall. He spat his broken tooth out into the palm of his hand and examined it, taking deep breaths and telling himself that he had been in fixes like this before. The stun baton lay cradled in his lap.

"Get out of bed and away from those stairs!" The Resistance were shouting without pause, nearly drowned out by the sirens that blared on outside. "Listen up! Anyone who can shoot, get to the hall and we've half a dozen pieces. Move!"

A pair of gunmen darted towards the stairs and flattened themselves against the wall on each side. Miljan joined them, reasoning that the corner near the threshold was the farthest from any line of fire. He beckoned to Iskander as the fighter on his left opened fire.

"Where! Do you see anything?"

"No."

"Then what are you shooting at?"

"I think they're waiting downstairs."

"Then why are—shit! Do you hear that?"

"Adler! Hey Adler, we've got manhacks!"

The short-haired woman nodded her weapon in affirmation and turned back towards the hall.

"Ready up those grenades, Karo. Hacks are coming."

"They're not—The hacks are in the elevator," Miljan called, but no one seemed to hear. "Hacks in the elevator. Iskander, tell them!"

"I don't hear them, do you?"

"Why should we hear them?"

"I think the second floor is clear."

One of the talkative gunmen near the stairs tossed a bottle of Dr. Breen's Private Reserve at the landing below. When no jittery riot cop mistook it for a grenade, the two rebels bounded down the stairs. A pistol sputtered at them from ground level, putting neat holes in the glass case of a fire extinguisher.

"Clear! All clear to the elevator, CPs in hard cover, first floor. We—" There was a pause in which a loud metallic whining became audible. "The hacks are in the shaft! Make with those grenades!"

Upstairs, people were on their feet, flighty and bewildered. Miljan tried to stand but his feet slid in a blood trail that had appeared from somewhere. Running legs filled his vision, and he lost sight of Iskander. Adler's black lieutenant darted past with an armful of pipe bombs.

"'Skander? Iskander! You fucking Turk, get—"

Iskander appeared on cue, shouldering his way through a trio of female refugees. He stumbled, wavered and hit the floor. People tripped over him. A handgun fell to the floor and discharged, but he kept on crawling through the tangle of limbs. The crowd passed by and vanished down the stairs, prodded along by Adler and her fighters. Civil Protection started firing again, and someone wailed.

"Bok!" Iskander spat, helping Miljan to his feet. "We go now?" He straightened and looked at his friend.

"Wait, we need—"

"Miljan, you look ridiculous."

"What?"

"What's wrong with—your teeth! You're missing a tooth."

"I know, I—listen, I'm not going to let them leave Barret. Help me carry him." The Serb gestured at the unconscious consul.

"Who? We've got to get out of here!"

"But—"

Every window in the hallway exploded inward, and the floor leapt from the beams supporting it. Bright streams of energy flew shrieking past, and Adler was cut nearly in half. The whirring sound of the pulse cannons on the APCs came afterward, as the dust descended. Iskander, Miljan and the four surviving rebels hit the floor.

Miljan tried to scream, swear, roar as loud as his lungs would allow, but could only cough.

"They're going to bring this goddamn building down!"

A kinetic pellet bounced along the ground, the beam of pulse energy that had sheathed it extinguished by concrete. Another volley demolished the room next door, somehow louder than the first.

"CP's losing patience..."

"Still want to carry Barrett out of here? Besides, the Rambos are leaving her." Iskander gestured at Adler's corpse and her fleeing subalterns. Miljan answered only with a stunned gaze, and Iskander half-led, half-dragged his friend down the stairs.

There was a new body on the landing, and the refugees were packed into the end of the hallway. They huddled in a sort of miserable, terrified ball, trying to stay below the level of the window where Barrett and Miljan had spoken together, a scant span of minutes before. The elevator droned and buzzed with its cloud of manhacks.

"Miljan! Miljan, are you with me here?"

"Frag out!" Down went one grenade into the shaft, and pinpricks of metal splashed all over the interior. A few fragments bounced from wall to wall, climbing up to exit on the second floor and hit the ceiling above their heads.

"Keep back, gentlemen. And where the hell is Adler?"

"Did we get any?"

"These CP's are getting antsy over here! Gonna make another go at us!"

"Karo, are you going to arm that damn thing or clean your nails with it?"

"Here, here."

"Pipe bomb! Might want to cover your ears this time."

Iskander dropped to the floor, and Miljan followed him only too readily. A pair of makeshift explosives tumbled out of sigh, fuses sparkling.

"Say, you're not hit, are you?"

Twin blasts almost wiped out his hearing, as chimes buried somewhere in his skull jangled painfully.

A single manhack appeared in the shaft as he looked up. Propelled by the explosion, it left a trail of smoke illuminated by the glow of its infrared eye. The rebels seemed transfixed as they watched the drone disappear out of sight above them, but the dervish-like flying blades reappeared moments later, flailing crazily from surface to surface.

"Get back, get back!"

The manhack cartwheeled, canceled its momentum and stabilized. Hovering for a moment, it sang in a high-pitched tone, complementing the throaty whir of an oversized horsefly. As a burst of submachine gun fire pockmarked the concrete behind, it flared two iron flaps like the ears of an angry bull and charged.

To Iskander's helpless incredulity, the bundle of razor blades picked him for a target. He momentarily grasped at Miljan's arm, perhaps to use it as shield, but only accomplished a panicked writhing motion in the bare second left to him. As the buzzing became thunderous, a booted foot, probably his, appeared in the space between his face and the drone. Vibrations ran up his leg, and his rubber soles gave off a burning smell where they had been cut through. The manhack pirouetted off in another direction to run into a wall of gunfire and evaporate as people slipped on loose shell casings.

"Miljan! Get up, I think I kicked a hack."

There was continual shooting in the stairwell now, and the floor vibrated with the concussion of grenades and now rockets from the APCs.

"Shaft is clear!"

"We're clear! Good to go, go!" The rebels' new leader grasped the dangling firehose used to winch up the water barrel and swung out into space. "Hold them off a little longer, then follow us on down," he called at the stairs. "We've left you the flashbangs!"

"Get in line!" the fighters roared. "There's a ladder and a rope, so take your pick."

Iskander scrambled up and shoved Miljan before him towards the opening. He fought back visions of rotating airborne knives as the Resistance descended ahead of them, fumbling with their weapons. For thirty seconds of blurry panic there was nothing but treaded steel ladder rungs and the man above him sitting on his head and stepping on his fingers. Miljan dropped off the ladder and Iskander followed, landing on a bed of gravel with a crunch. His left foot slid into a puddle and flooded through the gash left by the manhack. Pebbles worked their way between his toes.

"Watch your step, Iska. This is no place for clubfooted Turks."

"Good to hear you speak, you gypsy bastard. Now let's get away out of here."

The tunnel walls were caked with burnt residue from makeshift explosive, and silvery components twinkled amidst the debris. Shorn of its cutting wings, a drone buzzed uselessly on the ground, blinking its light and spinning like a top. Iskander looked into its camera lens blankly and crushed it under his heel.

Barret's people were emerging from the ceiling in shaky starts and stops, as the more agile slid down the dangling fire hose. Fighters pulled them to the ground and passed them bodily down the tunnel. The firing above was reaching a crescendo, pulse weapons instead of the CPs' sidearms, and there were snatches of guttural radio transmissions.

"We'd better leave quiet like," Iskander murmured. "These fellows might not be happy to see us go."

"Right. Wait for a moment and I'll go first. Wish you kept that gun."

"Gun... you lost my baton, didn't you?"

Miljan groaned.

"It's back up there with the dead broad. I'm sorry. Damnit."

The downward evacuation was halted by an old man with a head wound and the hysterical woman trying to speed his progress along the ladder by main force. The Resistance ended up in a snarl about the base of the hole, their instructions blotted out by frantic calls for bandages.

"Go!" Iskander hissed, but his his friend was already moving. Their footfalls kicked up dark water and loose metal, all of it making twangy echoes that cut through the commotion behind.

"Hey! Where the—Stop there!"

"Faster," Miljan grunted. "Bend up ahead."

"Karo! We've got runners! Get back here and _stop_, you Drinker cunts!"

To Iskander's dismay, the wall spat mortar at him. Whip-cracks lashed at his ear drums, endlessly repeated for meters and meters ahead, and the rebels were shooting at him.

"Down!" he roared, just as something like a hammer with a needle in it turned every muscle in his calf to rubber. Cement came up to meet him and when his hands absorbed the impact, he was already looking back over his shoulder. His entire body was twitching with disbelief at the pain, but there was no blood. The only red to be seen was the cascade of twinkling lights from the manhacks that suddenly poured into the tunnel from the elevator shaft. Careening off the walls, they dashed towards the rebels in corkscrew patterns, reaching them just as the last of the refugees fled shrieking through the gunmen. More gunfire crackled in the air overhead, and Miljan thrashed towards him on his stomach.

"Are you hit?"

He shook his head. The manhacks were in among the rebels now, flying uncontrollably through bullets and flesh. Replacing the useless firearms, stun batons sparked in the darkness, shocking drones to the ground.

"Get UP!"

Iskander kept staring back as Miljan flung him to his feet. The fighters managed to extricate themselves from the swarm while the surviving hacks swooped on two victims, one bleeding from the throat and the other speckled with gunshot wounds.

The corridor took a right angle turn an endless five meters ahead. The shooting pains lessened every time his right foot touched the ground, and the dull ache grew.

"I think, took... a ricochet," he gasped, as if it were the most amazing and important thing in the world.

"Run it off!" Miljan barked, catching his friend's arm to drag him along faster.

The keening of the manhacks receded; the gunfire eventually trailed off.

"We can stop," Iskander managed. Phlegm was clogging his throat, while the air in his lungs rasped like sandpaper.

"Not 'til we get clear to fucking Norway," Miljan growled. His fingers were quivering as he ran.

.

.

.

The bruise on Iskander's calf stared up at him through the dark water. Miljan had confirmed the injury as the effect of a spent bullet, and now he soaked his leg in a shallow trench where runoff from the street drains collected. It appeared clean, at least, lukewarm and lacking any scent.

The Serb crouched a little behind him, ear pressed to the jagged edge of a copper pipe that stretched a kilometer to the south, relaying the dim echoes of any pursuers the Combine might send their way. It had been quiet for ten minutes, except for the alarms and speeding vehicles heard directly above them, searching for thirty odd anti-citizens on the run.

"I think we've given them the slip," Miljan murmured, and slumped against the grimy wall.

"Did everyone else, though?"

"Fuck 'em. Shooting at us like that... Barret's people shouldn't have let those bastards in at all. But it's a good bet they got away. The tunnels and canals split off in every direction at a junction just south of there, and we know they made it that far. Could've hidden almost anywhere..."

He looked up at the light emanating from the drain over their heads.

"They—we left Barret. I wonder if they'll put him under the knife at Nova Prospekt. If there's any justice they shoot him on the spot."

"I still don't know who you're talking about," Iskander said and winced, hunching over his hurt leg. "All I saw were brand new Drinkers and our gun-toting heroes. What were they doing there?"

"Recruits, maybe. It's hard for them to find people in the blocks, and those folks looked tough as nails."

"Tough as quitters."

Miljan wrinkled his nose.

"Well, that's... I bet the Resistance even knew that Civil Protection would show up. They wanted to get that manpower before the Combine did. Barret's people could have joined the rebels from the start if they had wanted, so the way to get them to cooperate was to save them from the scary CPs. They're like Tito's partisans."

"Like who?" Iskander stood and adjusted his rolled-up pantleg.

"You were the one who read that history book to me, 'Iska. I thought you remembered all the old world stuff. The Partisan fighters from my country. Provoke a massacre, then take the refugees into your camp and they'll be stone cold killers. Completely ruthless."

"You sound like you approve."

The pair began to move north down the tunnel.

"I approve of _them_, seventy, eighty years ago, but not these crazies nowadays. Getting people butchered. You don't like to see... that..."

Iskander grunted.

"You know what it is? It's the women. You saw those women who got hit? In any decent world people should be outraged about that, but here it's like they're not anything. There's no women anymore; they can get shot just the same and no one notices any different."

"If it bothers you, drink some of Breen's water,'' Iskander answered, limping.

For a moment there was no answer. Miljan looked straight ahead.

"And why don't you—"

Iskander stopped short and raised his hands as his partner's back twitched angrily. The Serb shot him a look that was a confused mix of scathing, hurt and contempt. There was another moment of quiet, then the episode seemed to pass, and he started forward again. Iskander did not follow immediately.

"If I'm upset it's because I was shot, not them," he called ahead, in a conciliatory tone. Apologize? "Let them not shoot me, then I'll worry about those... about women."

"You weren't really shot that much," Miljan answered, no more anger apparent in his voice. "It may have even been a pebble and not a bullet, or part of one, slapping you sideways like your mother's hand."

"I was lucky, sure."

"Lucky? No. You weren't lucky; _lucky_ was my father's friend."

"Hmmn?" Iskander thought it best for him to talk for a while.

"They were both in the war; the one you read to us about. They ended up running around with some paramilitaries near this town... I can't remember... I know we trashed it, then we—not they, I mean, I—trashed the theater where they showed the film about it, later on."

The tunnel was narrowing now, with clean concrete edges. Up ahead was a subterranean roadway piled high with discarded cars, as if everyone in town had simultaneously decided to go skiing on the slopes of the massif that loomed to the north and had choked up the highway.

"So they were about two weeks into the war and on maneuvers outside that town when the fascists—"

"The fascists?" Iskander began counting back decades in his head. Surely Hitler and Krushchev had been defeated by 1970 or so? Or were his dates off?

"Da, the Ustaše. They were maybe three hundred meters away and they caught my father's people crossing a wide open gap where a causeway had been washed out. And they start shooting, pop pop pop. Five-five-four ammo flying overhead everywhere and a diška too, knocking bucketfuls of dirt out of the top of the road because stupid fascists always shoot high."

Miljan paused for effect, not noticing how Iskander's face had gone blank.

"My father runs through the gap, said he was mostly worried about the horsefly chasing him, and the guys who had already crossed were sitting down and smoking. He gets there. Then it's his friend's turn. Davor runs and he's halfway across when _slip, _that was the sound. He watches—he said he watched—a round go right through his friend. His chest is sort of twisted as he tries to keep his footing in the sand and _slip,_ in it goes. It pokes him in the side and comes out near his armpit, spits out some blood on the way. I don't think he could actually hear the sound, though..."

The pair began picking through a canyon of rusted bumpers and loose door frames. Miljan kicked a headcrab into a pile of hubcaps and continued.

"Avtomat Kalašnijkova, nineteen seventy four. It fires a tiny little round, like a child's finger. They call it the poison bullet because it goes in your chest and comes sideways out your arse. Tears you up inside. But when you're good and far away like Davor there, it slows down and doesn't always tumble. Then it goes right through you, straight and true, like a needle. So Davor just keeps on running. His blood wets the ground behind him and his feet sort of get in the way of each other for a second, but he runs over to my father and stops, looking a little confused. He only lets people help him sit down when they tell him to."

"So he was hit in the..."

Miljan drew a line across his torso with an extended finger, and Iskander narrowed his eyes.

"I know, he should be dead, shouldn't he. But the bullet went between his ribs, all through his lung, skipped the spine and then it was on its way to Knin. Now, a lung is basically just a big bag of air and slimy skin—"

"—the lung?" Iskander interrupted uncertainly. His only vision of the organ was a sort of piston-like device located below the heart.

"The lungs, yes. You can put a bullet in the lungs and sometimes it's like nothing's even happened. You would know what I mean if you had ever hunted big game. My father's friend was like a bothered deer. I bet you we could have passed needle and thread through from nipple to armpit, but they used it to sew him up instead, and figured that he would live. And he did, after a little more bleeding. But before that the bastard ran with his pack on all the way to the next hot meal, and then started yammering about the ache in his side and spent the next two months in a hospital bed, goosing nurses."

Iskander wondered if it was over.

"So..."

"So _that's_ lucky."


	5. Chapter 5

'Добро јутро_, _Двочевка,' began the note. 'Cвидание в5сирене, станица саб. Работу: кујасука!'

Iskander kicked away his blanket and swept the tiled confines of the shower—his bedroom—with sleep-addled eyes. Ever-insomniac Miljan had infiltrated during the night and left a crude message, and for once no food was missing. In an approximation of Russian and oversimplified Serbian, it read _Good morning, homosexual. Meet at 5 sirens, station garden. Job: rich bitch!_

"Bastard needs some grammar," Iskander grunted. Why his partner couldn't have woken him to relay as much, he did not know. The disjointed Cyrillic was worked into a print ad for German watches, clinging to the white space near the wrist band like a party of mountaineers.

Their garden near the train station was easy enough to get to, despite its proximity to a major transit route, and noon—or five sirens—was not too far off. Hopefully the rich bitch mentioned would be paying for the job, and not somehow the object of it. So many months into their association, Iskander was still not entirely clear on how far Miljan was willing to go in ensuring that their acquisitions were sufficient. Survival and morality were sometimes incompatible, but at a certain point survival became profit. It was little discussed, but the Serb's past had a violent element of unestablished magnitude. In the anarchic aftermath of Breen's surrender, all sorts had crawled out of the woodwork, and all of them armed. After all, it was no Combine presence that had driven Iskander's family underground.

He stood, waiting for his leg to complain. The angry bruise coloring his calf chose not to express an opinion, so Iskander scooped up his satchel and made for the door. Security for this particular institutional restroom-turned-safehouse was a shower curtain draped with several dozen bells and chimes. How Miljan had gotten in without setting off the whole contraption was a mystery, as the storm drain back entrance was a one-way hatch.

After detaching the curtain's worn-out bungee cords, one of the most tightly-controlled neighborhoods in City 17 lay just through a mouldering industrial kitchen. The armaments plants to the west meant that foot traffic was high when shifts changed, so the right outfit and a bit of nerve allowed one to blend in with relative security. Or that had been the case, before the scanner photoshoot and shoot-out two days before. Better not to risk it.

Meeting Miljan at the train station garden would be a good deal more dangerous, now that overhead cover from scanner identification was required. Iskander lacked a route, and the layout of the neighborhood did not make trailblazing an easy task. That whole half of City 17, starting from just above the citadel and ending at the canals and suburbs to the north, was tightly-packed with blocks of colorful residential structures. Towards the train station the architecture took a slight turn towards elegance, and as a result the claustrophobic alleyways and interconnected courtyards vital to navigation tended to disappear. As the city became less porous, checkpoints and walking walls became a greater problem.

Iskander's shower hideout sat in an old convent surrounded by larger buildings, stately century-old structures that had long since been picked over by CPs and citizens alike. Built on a gentle rise, they offered a good view in three directions from attics and cupolas. Line of sight to the north was resoundingly broken by three full ranks of tower blocks, some of them rust-colored behemoths built horizontally rather than vertically to cover a hundred meters with their concrete bulk. The Underground Railroad began in earnest under their shadow, where the drainage canals opened their parched guts to the sky and invited crows to pick at the garbage.

There were no crows but some fat squirrels in the convent's yard. They scattered at his approach and Iskander reminded himself to perfect his technique for snares when there was time. Up and over the iron gate and he crouched in the shade of an expansionist rhododendron. There was a short stretch of space open to observation from the air before he could reach the terraced housing beyond. The soft drone of the city was like manhacks. Iskander decided to run. It was a cool day anyhow, with a breeze coming off the shrunken sea.

He had only reached a fast trot when shooting pains ran up his leg and he toppled onto the yellow flagstones. Iskander lay still in the naked space before the Citadel and the Resistance spotters in the high rises, breathing as if he had actually been sprinting.

Well. That was idiotic. And acutely suspicious. At least his face was pressed close to the ground so no scanner could identify him.

He wasn't panicking. He wasn't.

The world still sounded like manhacks.

And what the hell was the matter?

Iskander felt the empty belt loop where his stunstick used to be. Left behind in that charnel house. A few deep breaths, and he righted himself, moved to cover. The manhack city followed him as he made his way west.

.  
.

.

Miljan pressed his ear to the drywall, listening. Pink insulation tickled his eyebrow and a spider hopped onto his lapel. That hadn't come from the street.

One of Iskander's older gardens was just over his shoulder, tucked away in a balcony of the central room on the hallway. Some pale, emaciated sunlight managed to reach the plants through the opaque screens that shielded the operation from view. The beauty of it was that CPs continually stalked the street just outside, often spending half a shift in the shade of the overhang. Because the garden was so close to a major thoroughfare, scanners that picked up the gardeners' heat signatures through the blinds would see only citizens in a sanctioned space. However, working without rustling leaves and stomping on the floor was difficult, perhaps why the tomatoes and cabbages were mostly abandoned.

A radio squawked and was cut off.

"Shit," Miljan hissed. It had come from his side of the building, not the street-facing side. Yes, there was the feminine Combine dispatcher, reading dispassionately from her script on a hushed transmitter. "Doesn't sound so serious," he mumbled to himself, but one finger on his right hand was shaking slightly. No, no it wasn't.

He ducked beneath a window, dust from the underside of the sill frosting his hair. There was a paved yard out back, with other buildings close by. Would he be visible through the glass if he stood, or would there be enough glare to hide his face?

There were voices now, and a bit of laughter. The Serb descended the stairs two slow steps at a time and made for the house's laundry room. Visible through the tin vent near the wash basin was a Civil Protection APC parked a bare meter away. Three officers loitered outside, looking nonchalant. And maybe the one on the left was talking to another cop behind the vehicle. They had removed their masks and helmets, revealing pale, hairless heads. Miljan recognized strains of vowel-less Czech, and the fellow nearest the wall had an old world regimental tattoo sprawled across his neck.

Some regulation English found its way into their speech, and Miljan picked out the words 'fugee freight,' the local name for the trainstation serving the outskirts and the main coastal rail artery. In addition to bringing transfers to the city, it was popular with illegals for its lack of particle barriers and security checks. Civil Protection liked it for the grandeur of the terminal, but not quite so much as they liked shipping newcomers off to Nova Prospekt instead of processing them for settlement.

Miljan drew back from the wall and sat down slowly. This was another reason the garden here was abandoned. There was no way out except in plain sight of the idle CPs, and bored officers were the most lethal thing in town. He could try his luck on the main street opposite, but the door was bricked in, and crawling conspicuously out of a boarded window just wouldn't do.

It was probably twenty minutes to 5 bells. Time to start counting. His unassailable record for time spent trapped by the law stood at three bells all the way until sunset. A work party with a halo of scanners had started constructing a checkpoint outside a promising storehouse. Not the best circumstances in which to be alone with one's thoughts and one's death warrant. Luckily these CPs couldn't stay hanging around off-duty for too long. Whether they scared off Iskander, their contact, or both was another question. Now one of them was pissing on the wall.

The noon bell sounded, glancing off the walls and putting a trio of crows to flight.

"Sranje..." Already? Better to risk it and move now. If Iskander showed up there could still be a big payoff. Miljan padded out of the laundry room, cursing inwardly as his foot scuffed loudly on a patch of exposed concrete. It was possible to get to the adjacent building by crossing a narrow alley. It would put him in full of the CPs, but they weren't likely to give chase as was dressed the part and not in a restricted area.

The back door, of course, was wedged shut as he had left it half a bell ago. And the wood block was in tight too. He gave it a kick, and winced as hinges rattled and the entire frame groaned.

"Fuck me—if—bastards—hear me I'll go and—" Four more blows of his foot and the wedge skittered away, sliding musically through the field of broken glass on the floor. Miljan froze, his breath a double hiss in his nostrils. How had they not heard that?

Have to go. Now, now.

The door opened noiselessly, thank God. Eye contact was lethal, but he looked to his right anyways, and almost tripped when he saw that the CPs were wearing their helmets now. Reaching for the handle long before it was within reach, the entrance on the other side loomed and swallowed him. Door shut and bolted, merciful blackness, no footsteps behind. Miljan exhaled.

"There you are," said a silhouette.

"Jesu—that you, Iska?"

"Yeah. Come meet our benefactor."

"Our ben..." Miljan followed his partner out of the dim foyer, to where a lanky woman in an immaculate overcoat squatted near the wall.

"Oh," he said to Iskander. "So you've met?"

"This is your contact, right?"

"He wouldn't know." The woman stood, shouldering a backpack and trailing a long red braid. Her face was dominated by a broken and skewed nose. "We didn't speak in person. Milan, is it?"

"In a manner of speaking," he grunted.

"Ionna. Have you briefed your friend?" Her inflection was Greek.

Iskander chuckled.

"Not as such. Are you Resistance?"

"Well we don't have time to go over it again. I have it written down, so you two will have to puzzle it out. And no, the rebels may be paying, but I'm just a drainrunner like you two. Now shall—"

"—A drainrunner?" Iskander narrowed his eyes. "You're not... Ion, are you?"

Miljan looked up sharply as Ionna let out a sigh.

"The name's quite a hint, huh? Let's say that was a sign of trust, okay?"

"I... thought you were a man. Do you—"

"—No, I don't live in a working subway car because there's no metro in this town. You know that. And I'll show you just how rich I am, if you'll follow me."

The trio made their way down the hall, sweeping the floor with strange shadows from sunlight that penetrated the ceiling.

"But did you really spraypaint the Overwatch Nexus?" Iskander asked.

Ionna's lips curled into a slow smile.

"That's the one story they tell about me that's true. They couldn't read the second line for while, because they got frantic to remove it all of a sudden. Only the signature really stuck, anyway."

"Ion, Champion of Rats," Miljan recited with a cautious grin.

"Well, I was younger then, and the CPs had just killed a friend of mine. I planted a bomb too, by the way, but apparently detonators degrade after sitting on a shelf for a generation."

She halted before a closed door.

"I didn't write that pro-Resistance crap, though. And not 'Allahu Akbar,' obviously. Anyways, here we are. You'll take this bag with you once everything's squared away."

"Out _there? _There's some CPs sitting with their buggy. Tell us where we're headed and we'll find a different—"

Iskander hissed in alarm as Ionna opened the door with a roll of her eyes. The three masked officers on the other side stood. Miljan wanted to run, but his friend was frozen so he followed suit. Ionna beckoned with a jerk of her head and strode out into the sunlight, reaching into her rucksack as she went.

"Good afternoon, officers. I trust all's good and civil?" She proffered a glittering handle of vodka, which was stiffly accepted. Two of the CPs exchanged nods and walked away in opposite directions.

"So there's that, and there's nine more bottles waiting for after you get this rather timid citizenry where they're going. Once I see them again safe and sound, I'll leave directions to the stash in your dead drop. You know which one because you only have one. Now if these brave lads ever get themselves out here..."

"They know us already they know us already," Miljan whispered, and went out to join Ionna.

"Nice to see you, Milan. The backpack has everything you'll need. Just get your friend out here, would you? Anything doesn't go precisely as expected and they might decide to send you to the big house for a titanium brain pan."

"And this is the plan?" Miljan tried to keep his head turned away from the lone CP.

"Truly. You're coming up in the world and will travel in style. Luck be with you."

Ionna's marionette legs propelled her back inside. She gave Iskander a shove as she passed by and was gone.

"Mount up, citizens." The officer's conversational tone was impossible to reconcile with the chattering, staticy voice that passed through his vocoder. He moved to the rear of the APC and flipped open a hatch, revealing an interior equally black and featureless. It also looked impossibly cramped. "There's room for one verdictee. You'll both just have to make do."

Miljan took a slow step.

"Is your friend coming, or do I make do with one bottle and dump you two somewhere?"

Mercifully, Iskander started forward and they folded themselves into the compartment, an angular space thick with the scent of ozone. All light vanished when the latch clicked.

"I can't believe it," Iskander exhaled. "How much is she paying us?"

"Don't talk."

The enclosing metal began to vibrate at high frequency. It was numbing, and as the whole vehicle began sing, Miljan realized that it was the motor. With a rasp of tires on gravel they were off. The tug of inertia, now backward, now sideways, was a novel sensation.

Or maybe not quite novel. Memories leapt at him from the dark corners of their enclosure, recollections of a train ride two lifetimes ago. They kept dancing before his eyes in the blackness, until a hard right turn ground Iskander's jaw into the small of his back and flung them away.

"_Kurac! _How long has it been, Iska?"

"Forty seconds," came the garbled response. "I've been counting."

"Forty seconds! Fucking Turk—"

A screech like a circuit blowing out interrupted him.

"I think we just went through a checkpoint. Particle Barrier."

Now there were fleeting strains of Dr. Breen's voice.

"Right turn," Iskander whispered. "East?"

"Another checkpoint."

"Left... and again. Right—shit! Miljan, is this North?"

"Steady on, Iska; I think we're—" Braking force slammed his head into the front wall and he bit his tongue. Pain and incredulity. Iskander had stopped counting.

The vibrations were gone. Boots scuffed on pavement and the hatch swung skyward, noon sun swirling in the dust of its wake. Miljan slid out of the compartment headfirst, ending up on all fours with his face pressed against their chauffeur's gleaming jackboot. The gas mask standing over him let a slow chuckle escape through its filter.

"We've arrived, citizens. I'll wave the fare 'cause I like you so much."

"Iz pićke..." Miljan choked off the rest as he stood.

"Not very polite," the officer observed. Miljan blanched. "You a Yugoslav, citizen? All the south Slavs I knew were meatheads. Did you fight in the war? The big shiny lightshow one, I mean. I did. Shortest wet job I ever pulled, heh."

"I wasn't in no army." Miljan had to tug the words from his throat.

"No? Just rats, then?"

"Da."

They were parked in the shadow of a four-story building, all whitewash and cinderblocks. A pair of railroad tracks ran by, leading to the glass-covered arches of the train station to the south.

"Fugee freight," Iskander murmured.

"The one and only. You rats know that this is the Nova Prospekt line right here? Surgical improvements made to order."

Miljan glared.

"Anyways, we've both got a job to do. Just this way."

The officer shoved a sliding metal door into motion with his foot, and the blue shimmer of a particle field winked into existence in the corridor beyond.

"Okay then. Chetnik, Gypsy-face, one of you take this button here." He cradled a bauble of rounded black plastic in the wrinkled palm of his glove. "This goes in your ear usually, but if you hold it out ahead of you, the exclusion field will stay passive." He paused. "There's a neat trick where the barrier cuts you in half if you drop it halfway through, so don't do that unless I can watch. I'll need the earbud back, so leave it in the urinal of the bathroom ten meters in on your left. You should be able to get back out again without tripping any more fields."

"In the urinal?"

"I didn't say it was mine. Now get inside before the scanners read your fucking horoscopes. This door opens from inside, but you'll want to use one of the exits on the north side of the building. More cover over there."

Miljan plucked the tiny device from his enemy's hands, still not entirely sure how this could be happening.

"You two, are going to get me _unbelievably_ drunk." The officer's grin was obvious even through his mask. He slammed the door with an iron screech and a rain of yellow paint flakes. The dark overpowered their sun-dazzled eyes as the humming of the exclusion field filled their ears.

"Krushchev on a cracker," Iskander sang out. "What the hell is this?"

Miljan scratched his head ruefully.

"I know, I didn't think she'd... I'll give you the short version; just let's see if this thing gets us through the field first."

"You'd better fucking not give me the short version. Tell me what we're doing and I like it just fine on this side where I know there aren't any bullsquids, Overwatch or goddamn komodo dragons."

"Komo-what? Fine, we'll work things out here. But no bullsquids. This building is a Combine power grid station." Miljan sat down on the floor and stretched his back, letting out a satisfying crack. Ionna's rucksack rolled on its side. "For the record, the CP escort wasn't part of the plan, at least not when I talked to Ion yesterday. But she's done a princely job setting this up, seeing as we're still free men, and this facility should be completely automated. So no guards either, and if they catch us on tape our mugs are no more incriminating than they were last week." He pulled a flashlight from the bag and switched it on. "A torch. That was decent of her."

"The short version's sounding better by the minute, Miljan."

"So we're laying some groundwork for the Resistance. I don't really mind, and once you see what the pay is, you won't either. Civil Protection in this precinct is beautifully corrupt, it turns out."

"I did notice that."

"And I wish we had known that months ago. Ion says she was contacted by a train station cop who swings both ways. The Resistance setting up shop around here aren't part of the Railroad, but get this, they're a bunch of scientists."

"Scientists?" Miljan recognized the look on Iskander's face as that of boy shaking hands with a football star.

"They've got a long-term lease on the Northern Petrol plant across the tracks and whatever they're doing in there, they need power."

"Don't we all?"

"A _lot_ of it. Ion says they caused a major outage two weeks ago. Checkpoints went down for blocks."

"So they're drawing on the Combine grid?"

"Exactly. Here, Iska, take the torch. We're going to monkey around with the circuitry so they can draw all the juice they need without anyone noticing." All the tools, schematics and directions are in the bag here. Now let's see if this little tričarija actually works."

"Right." Iskander peered at the flashlight's LED bulb appreciatively. "Won't be surprised if it just leaves us stuck here. Didn't our chauffeur seem a bit too... friendly?"

"Friendly? Fuck him. He broke rule number one."

Rule number one. Don't talk about the war. It had never happened. The world as it was today was the natural evolution of the way it had been the day before the day when no war had been fought. Everything was completely normal. Rule number two, don't talk about the future. 'Where do you see yourself in six months' was the cruelest question imaginable, for those with the wits to survive generally had a good grasp of the odds.

Miljan moved towards the plane of blue energy and placed his hand against it, fingers outspread. The barrier gave off a loud buzzing in response, and his hand wavered in the few centimeters where the repulsion force was weak enough to counteract. He then reached over and tried to stick his other arm through, the CP's device tucked between thumb and forefinger. The Serb leaned into the field with all its weight, but it was like a pane of electrified glass.

"Sranje... why doesn't this..."

"I think you have it locked up," Iskander said. He tucked the flashlight into his breast pocket and plucked away the Combine ear bud. "Back up and let me have a try."

Iskander stood back until the field became quieter and less visible, then licked his finger and pressed the device into it. Reaching out, his hand passed ghostlike through the barrier, and the rest of him followed.

"There. Neat as neat. Quite a girl, your Ion."

"I'm still can't get over her being one—you'll have to toss the thingamajig back through, Iska—but she is quite a gal. You should've seen what she wrote on CP HQ. They couldn't figure how to climb up to remove it, and I've no idea how the hell she managed it. After a while of milling around like the dumb bastards they are, they had to blow up the wall it was written on. It was beautiful!"

"Sounds like you're pretty taken with her. Fancy that mashed potato nose of hers?"

"Shit, Iska. Wait'll you see how much food she has to give us. Why, I could go off citizen's rations long enough to get a goddamn erection."

Iskander guffawed and flicked the ear bud back across the particle field. The Serb passed through and they continued on down the hall.

"There's the crapper in through there." Iskander's light painted a row of toilets, shining in the dark room like stained teeth.

"Well I'm not sticking my head in that crab den blind. Bring the light and let's find a urinal."

"I can't believe we're leaving it here. I could walk right into Breen's living room with this thing and ask him for an omelet. ...What d'ya think he eats?"

"His tie. Hence that awful turtleneck. But I don't want to risk whatever revenge our psycopath chauffeur could cook up. Anyways, we could use his help again some other time I don't value my own skin. Do something useful with the damn torch. I want to make sure it isn't going to slip through down the drain."

"There. At least whoever gets to keep the thing will smell like twenty-year-old piss."

"Twenty?"

"Or whatever. Don't start that up again."

Back in the main passageway, a swelling electrical drone set Miljan's teeth on edge.

"This sounds like it," he said. Another left turn just up ahead and there was a large chamber lined with transformers. The tower lamp had been upended and shone into the floor, but light slanted in from the paneled windows near the ceilings.

"Think that grating's locked?" Iskander asked.

"When have we ever known them to lock a single thing, except electronically?" Miljan gave the chainlink door a kick inward. "But... damn it..."

"Shto?"

"We left Ion's bag on the other side of the particle field."

"Mother of—I'll go back for it. Go and find your inner electrician."

Iskander pounded back down the corridor. The rucksack lay just on the other side of the blue haze, and he poked at it with a splintered broom handle, eventually looping one of the straps and dragging it near. The exclusion field parted around the limp fabric with a cooperative hum, leaving a trio of ants pasted to the far side.

Back in the circuit room, Miljan already had the top off one the cylindrical transformer boxes. He had stopped working through, and stood frozen with his head cocked.

"Did you hear that?" he hissed at Iskander.

"Hear what?"

"I heard that, you fugee dumbasses!" A static-speckled voice cut through the stuffy atmosphere, ending in an electronic chirp. "This is your neighborhood police officer, and just in case you're too thick to figure it out, I'm talking on the building's intercom."

They exchanged uncertain looks.

"I have an audio feed, idiots! So you can have the decency to thank me for the tip-off. There's been a change of plans. A surprise party is headed your way. Unscheduled maintenance or something along those lines."

"You double-crossing piece of syphilitic—"

A piercing digital tone erupted from the speakers on the wall, cutting Miljan off as Iskander clutched at his ears.

"HEY! Some _respect,_ if you please! I'm getting something out of this too, so listen up! I sincerely hope you use your puny brainpans to find an intelligent hiding place sometime in the next five minutes. If they find you, I'll say that you're both dangerous and should be shot at once. But until then, we are still in business. _Ponimayesh? _Unit out."

Miljan droppped down from his perch on the transformer.

"Christ! This is happening again! They're going to barge in on us just like last time!"

"Keep your head! This is a big building and we've got five minutes to—"

The sound that interrupted him was unmistakably the front door trundling open.

"Five_ minutes!_" Miljan rasped. "They'll see us from the hall if we run now. Iskander, unplug that lamp and we'll hide in the dark by the fusebox."

His friend groaned.

"We're going to die because of light switches."

Now there was movement in the passageway. The familiar martial tread mixed together with the scratch-scuff of clawed feet. Civil Protection silhouettes halted by the doorway, and a gangly, hunched shape followed.

"Unit six to team five actual."

"Five actual, go ahead."

"Does the lizard have its instructions?"

"Five actual to unit six, say again."

One of the CPs in the hall made an offensive gestures to the radiowaves.

"Interrogative: shock laborer imbibes electrostructural regulation imperatives."

"Interrogative affirmative. Effect overseer directive."

With a strangely human sigh, a collared and shackled vortigaunt padded into the room. It paused just past the door, its single oversized eyeball standing out in lurid red. The enslaved janitor's small pectal arm twitched, resembling a salutary wave. Iskander realized that their offworld visitor was looking directly at him through the gloom.

"Corporal," the voice could have come from an elderly chain smoker, but for the rumbling that accompanied the words, from somewhere deep in the scaly chest. "This one suggests the officialdom quit the grounds, lest our electrical endeavors cause them harm. This one shall enact faithfully the charge..."

The lead CP mimed a cigarette with gloved fingers and lead his subordinates back down the hall. The particle field chirped as all three passed through.

"... with a static charge," the Vort finished, chuckling. "They have gone without, so what have we here?"

A green spark curved earthward and the upset lamp flickered to life. Miljan remained motionless behind an aluminum crate, but Iskander squatted in the well-lit open, looking the Vortigaunt in the eyes.

"Well met! A human in this place will not fare well in the eyes of the tower. Stand and describe yourself in the manner of the severed." As usual in Iskander's experience, the voice could best be described as male. It undulated in pitch and tempo with every syllable, and seemed too loud by half given the CPs waiting outside. He decided just to nod, and was met with a bow.

"How star-crossed that we should first come upon you, and redirect elsewhere the foreman quislings. We have come to fulfill our office in this house of unseen current. What does a human find here?"

"I..." If the creature's English was difficult to decipher, its potential trustworthiness was inscrutable. Iskander knew better than to ask the slave for a name or proffer his own. "We are also working on the electricity."

"Without minders?" Keen interest sank the voice to the lowest gurgling depths. "You must be one who resists!"

Miljan abruptly emerged from concealment.

'Let's not tell the lizard anything else,' he said in Russian.

'He owns us right now,' Iskander replied.

"Oh ho! So there is more than one. The predominate case. Those who live severed never can abide the addition of physical solitude. This one who lives severed by these bonds can sadly sympathize!"

Miljan snapped his head to the left and fixed the Vortigaunt with a stare, reminding Iskander of his partner's rarely-mentioned alien problem.

"Have you come to repair the power station?"

"Verily. We can insert oneself into the wiring and divine the source of troubles. Surges now trouble the metal mind above, and so we are tasked with restoration."

"Power surges?" Iskander went out on a limb. "We're not Resistance, but the Resistance is causing the surges and we came to try and conceal them. We have tools and a modified circuit, but there's no time to take the system apart now."

'How can you trust him with that?' Miljan demanded.

'Steady on, Nedić. If he turns us in, then the power plant goes down too, and what do you care? But I think he'll help us with the job.'

The Serb threw up his hands and turned away, muttering something about alien Drinkers. Iskander plucked Ionna's instructions from the pack and hunched over the tower lamp, skimming her cramped penmanship.

"We need to prevent the grid from monitoring the power use on a certain line," he explained. "Apparently the easiest way to do it is to replace a part and disable the meter on the whole junction box. It's complicated... can you read?"

"Nooo need for scribblings," the Vortigaunt chortled. "This one can accomplish all, and in our own best way. Even shall we overload the shut-off system, allowing unlimited power to your friends. Such a shadow is the Combine city-mind to the vortessence, that they heed nothing that has not malfunctioned."

"I think—great. You don't speak Turkish, do you? Nevermind."

"Show us the object of your electronic subterfuge, so that you may soon abscond undetected."

"Miljan, a little help here? You got us this job, so rise to the fucking occasion and show us what to do."

The Serb walked over to the open transformer in silence and peered inside.

"I think it's this double line here. I was going to verify that it leads to the plant west of here." "That we can easily divine."

The sound of boots echoed down the hall. As the humans ran for cover, the Vortigaunt spun on its hooves and lashed the wall outside with blue-tinged energy.

"Ware! This one has not made the premises safe for human occupation! Live electromagnetic components yet clutter the workspace."

Miljan whistled in appreciation.

"They have wisely chosen to retreat, oh resistors. With regret, that was an unauthorized expression of Vortal output, superfluous to maintenance, and will be logged by our remote overseers. Your hostile friend has shown all that is needed, so now it is requested that you leave by cover of darkness. All promised shall be accomplished, as our struggle is yours."

Alien claws shrieked and sparked, and darkness swept over the entire building. Even the particle field gave off a truncated blip as it vanished.

"Find your means of exfiltration, bold humans."

"Iskander, pack and torch, let's go." Miljan was more than ready to move, and Iskander managed a short 'thanks' on the way out. The sliding steel door was still open, but the noon sun cast few rays into the darkened building. Padding away from daylight, they turned a corner as the power came back on with a crack of thunder and some insect-like buzzing.

"He's going to work," Iskander whispered. "He's not going to double-cross us. I tell you, the Vorts are all Resistance waiting to happen."

"You say that like it's a good thing, Iska. How do we get out of here?"

"Let's find a window. That CP said north side?"

"Yeah, but those ones are bricked up. Here, this door has a latch on this end."

Miljan gave a downward heave and shouldered his way into a cavernous loading bay, scattered with pallets, fork lifts and dead rats.

"Grunt louder; I don't think they heard that one." Iskander flicked the torch from side to side. "Over there."

They could see sunlight fading through a heavy plastic curtain, behind which lay a truck dock. Beyond the rolling grille gate was a parking area that shimmered with heat haze, and beyond that the underside of the Kanaliy route overpass.

"Wonder what killed these rats."

"Whatever we're smelling killed those rats. Your mother's cooking, maybe. Get ready on that winch there and I'll unhook this door."

"Watch out for scanners, yeah?" Miljan had to high kick the winch handle a number of times, breaking up the orange rust that held it in place like glue. When he had cranked the door half a meter off the ground, Iskander stuck his head underneath.

"Okay, we've got a sunken rail line to the left and a side street to the right. There's cover below the highway, but not much."

"Hold on—there, got it locked. Ion said to meet in the empty apartments north of here. Should be around a hundred meters, across an east-west track."

"Right. Sky's clear, so let's crawl on out."

The two of them darted across the empty lot and into the shadows beneath the elevated roadway.

"I think we got it done," Miljan said. "What do you say, five minutes 'till we're rich?"

Iskander smiled. Have that, manhack city.


	6. Chapter 6

Old, old wine. He didn't remember it tasting so bitter. But Miljan knew the bottle dangling from his fingers would have cost a bundle in years past, and that made it better. Okay, so the buzzing in his head was actually what made it better. God, _damn!_

He liked reading over the list every few hours, just to gloat to the concrete interior of the old fuel tank, now the stash to end all treasure stashes. Or not read, exactly. More like skim the Latin alphabet's ugly letters while reciting the contents of Ionna's receipt from memory. Yes, the Champion of Rats had delivered.

_Well done, my rodents. Welcome to one of my larger storage areas, the contents of which are now yours. Access to the nearby undergound network is my greater gift to you, in fact. It is a series of interconnected Fallout shelters for Party personnel, if you were wondering. I have never come across another living thing down here before, so please maintain that state of affairs. I removed the firearms from the cache, as there is a limit to the amount of trouble I like to cause. A full inventory follows. Your assistance at the power station was of inestimable value despite dubious prospects. We will be in touch. Iona._

_ 1 litre lighter fluid_

_ 4 litres petrol_

_ 1 gas camping stove_

_ 1 acetylene torch and mask_

_ 1 refurbished car battery_

_ 6 scanner batteries_

_ 1 scanner battery converter to run rechargeable devices_

_ 3 flashlights_

_ 7 egg cartons of various LED bulbs_

_ 41 glow sticks_

_ 2 VHF radios_

_ 30m nylon climbing rope_

_ 1 CP gas mask, tunic and flak vest (invalid access codes and magnetic ID)_

_ 2 CP stun batons _(Iskander had been overjoyed)

_1 sledgehammer_

_carpenter's tool kit_

_ Soviet era topo map of city, coastal areas, annotated with Apron and checkpoint locations_

_ 4 square meters anti-infrared fabric_

_ kit with assorted necessary hygienic supplies (trust me)_

_ basic first aid kit plus various medications (ibuprofen, tetanus IV, aspirin, disinfectants)_

_ medical handbook (German) for above_

_ 1 silly pre-invasion mountaineering backpack_

_ 3 sets of East German military surplus winter wear_

_ nailclippers!_

_ shoe repair kit_

_ sewing kit_

_ 25 mechanical pencils, 3 laundry markers_

_ 2 bottles epoxy glue_

_ 10m rubber hose_

_ 30 water filters_

_ vitamins! (everything a growing boy needs)_

_ UN nutrition supplements and survival biscuits_

_ 7 bottles champagne _

_ 12 bottles Georgian wine_

_ 3 bottles of scotch (God help you)_

_ 1 crate venison jerky and salted pork_

_ 4 kilos salt fish_

_ 2 kilos dried fruit_

_ 1 jar of honey_

_ 5 4-kilo sacks brown rice_

_ 23 canned vegetables (only 5 years old)_

_ 3 kilos of oats_

_ 4 litre jar powdered milk_

_ 2 kilos of various nuts (good riddance)_

_ November 1987 edition of Playboy_

_ and all tax-exempt!_

All that really left was the nagging question of whether it was better to be rich or drunk. After six hedonistic days the question remained unresolved. He did not miss the sight of the hostile, scanner-filled sky, and it even felt good crossing consumed items off the list.

Mixed iron shavings and cement dust rained down as Iskander descended the ladder.

"You're _still _here?"

"Why would I leave?" Miljan bellowed, maybe a little more tipsy than he thought. "As if there—"

He choked on his wine as a headcrab dropped into the tank, pawing at Iskander's shoulder in mid-air before landing on a crate with an aggrieved squeak. His friend hissed and leapt down the ladder. A stunstick appeared somewhere along the way, sparked to life and there was a bright neon flash. A burning smell filled the stuffy space: high setting fried crab.

"That's not going in the larder." Miljan tittered, then cleared his throat to hide the fact.

"Jesus balls! Where don't these fucking bugs turn up?"

"Don't get worked up, Iska. We're men of wealth and taste now." The Serb laughed again and kicked the parasite's carcass to the edges of their enclosure.

"Like hell, we are. What if that thing had fallen on your head? How rich would you be then?"

"'Skander, 'Skander, why so tense?"

"D'Avila's dead."

Miljan paused with the bottle at his lips.

"What happened."

"Good of you to ask, but I don't see how it matters. He was slightly less rich than us, so he went and died a bit sooner."

"Don't such a Turk—"

"All I heard was a lot of shooting. Then they detained everyone for blocks. I hid in a dumpster."

"Hell..."

Iskander shrugged and collapsed against a pile of rice sacks. Squinting at the label on a half-empty bottle of scotch, he uncorked it with his teeth. They drank for five minutes, letting the moaning air at the tank's lid monopolize the conversation.

"What did you do today, Miljan?"

"Sat in here, I guess. You?"

"Oh, did the rounds. Checked the cistern, replaced some filters. Weeded the court garden. Not the factory garden. No point in taking too many risks now."

Silence.

"Miljan, don't you get sick of this tank after a while?"

"Nah, it's like a vacation. Because if I didn't have all this, I would be out trying to get exactly this."

"I would get bored." Iskander took on too much scotch and coughed. "Tomorrow I think I'll go to the garden at the plant. We still need fresh greens. And the day after that, maybe we split this stash up and move it somewhere more convenient."

"Yuh."

"And then in a week, I suppose it's worth picking over D'Avila's place, now that he's checked out. Next week, find something else to do. And next month... month after that..." Iskander's voice slipped away. His friend cast a sharp glance; he was exceeding the permissible timeline of discussion.

"Well..." Iskander's voice was a little slurred now. "Next month there's really not that much _to_ do. And I s'pose a little after that we'll both get shuffled off, one way or the other."

"Fuck that!" Indignation filled Miljan's voice. "Nothing's changed! We can still make do like before, better even. Now it will only take a bit of foraging each day to keep our food stocks stable. And with all the battery power we have stored up..."

"But a headcrab can still fall on your head whenever it fucking likes. And there's no real reason to it. You can't be careful enough. Maybe it decides to sidle on up while you're asleep. And that's the least of what will kill you."

"Iska, you know what I've said about Turks and alcohol—"

"Hold your tongue, damnit! A clever bastard like you can't even step outside without taking your life in your hands. How many birds have you seen recently? Any one of those is a scanner and boom, there's the end of your pathetic parenthesis. There's nothing we can _do_ with this pile of shit you're lying on. Nothing they can't take away. It can't ever be secure enough."

"I swear, if I get a hangover it's because of you. Take your doom somewhere else, for heavens sake."

Iskander mounted the ladder, but simply slapped his hands against the next rung.

"Scavenge. Find _foodwatershelterpower_ and then hide it. That was the life. Now we have all that, and it doesn't buy us more than five minutes of existence in this hole of a city! You told me that next month didn't exist because our next meal was a week away. Well now it exists! We could sit in here forever and eat and drink and piss our pants and the outcome next month hasn't changed! So what's left? Nothing but waiting for the odds to quit turning up funny, that's what!"

Miljan flung his empty bottle at the wall with a lazy motion. It hit with a dense sound and clattered to the floor where it didn't break.

"Are you going to stand for that?" Iskander asked hoarsely. "Are you going to get off your ass?"

Miljan looked at the concrete behind his friend's head. In a flat voice he answered.

"And do what?"


	7. Chapter 7

Surviving such a shitty world was what made you feel good—a little giddy, a little proud. But when the surviving was done with, you had to live in it. And as it turned out, he couldn't do that. There wasn't any way it could be done.

They had divvied up the spoils three days earlier, with Miljan taking extra food and the Playboy while leaving most of the travel equipment. When Iskander entered the tank that morning, his partner and half the supplies were gone. There had been no note, not even a poorly written one.

"Wealth changes people, you know?" Ionna chuckled to herself and rearranged her interminable legs on the stool. "Once you've got it, you have to protect it. Anyways, I'm sure he'll turn up. The better question is, what are you going to do?"

"I'm not so sure he... what do you mean, what am I going to do?"

"It's been nine days, Iskander." The ninth day's moonless night was all about them, streaming in through the holes in the theater's roof to smother the stage where they sat. "Haven't you had your fill of living it up? Especially since your friend has decided to celebrate in private."

"I suppose so... But what does a rich man _do_ in this city?"

"Well, a rich man could carve out a place for himself. All you've really got there is some investment capital, and not really enough to keep you warm this winter. I don't expect you to make yourself famous or anything. It was just an accident when happened to me... An accident that eventually became entertaining."

"So I'm your protégé now?"

"I thought you were my dinner date." Ionna looked out at the darkness, where hundreds of empty seats sat watching back. "There's no show, for obvious reasons."

"Tell you what I'm doing, the next few days at least. I still have half a dozen shelters and storage sites to check, and see if Miljan is using any of them." Iskander kicked a warped floorboard and set it rattling with a musical tone. "We never even arranged a channel for the VHF. He could be three days crabbed for all I know."

"Would you quit it, having death on the brain? The high life isn't supposed to make you feel so morbid."

"But the high life is precisely the cause. Mind if I say something crude?"

Ionna stretched, popping half the joints in her back and neck.

"So long as it's interesting."

"Well, it occurs to me that you're living on borrowed time."

The Champion of Rats frowned.

"We all are," Iskander continued. "You practically own this city, yet you have a life expectancy of last Tuesday."

"Life expectancy only applies to groups. It doesn't work if there's no one else like me."

"Don't dodge me," Iskander insisted. "No one who lives like us can expect to stick around. There's no long-term. No next year."

"You're not really Turkish, are you?"

"What? No..."

"Then what?"

Iskander made an exasperated noise and wondered why he was answering.

"My father's family was Abkhaz."

"And the rest?"

"Something else. ...Meskhetian."

"But isn't that _interesting_! You said your friend was from the Krajina, didn't you? My forebears are all Pontic Greeks, so that makes the three of us bona fide expellee refugee refuse. Hell, Miljan's ancestors were first kicked out by the people who took in your kicked-out ancestors before they helped _them_ kick out _my _ancestors. Beautiful, isn't it?"

A chorus of houndeye blasts echoed in from the nearby park, where packs fifty strong hunted deer and boar.

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Nevermind then. I'll be straight with you. You were going to ask me how I do what I do, right? One rat to another?"

Iskander turned up his chin, offering half a nod.

"In that case, my half-Abkhazian protégé, I'll admit that the reaper 'round the next corner is pretty hard to ignore. I suppose we're all on a really short road."

Right on cue came the reverberations of the sentry guns as they opened up on the hunting houndeyes.

"Truth be told... I may just be extraordinarily well-practiced at ignoring him. I see no particularly important connection between the length of my time here and the manner in which I spend it." She laughed. "I suppose you're right to look at me like I'm mad. I'm downright eccentric. It was the war, I think."

Iskander's face fell.

"Yes, the war. I think it matters how much of it you saw. Maybe you missed it, I don't know. Suffice to say there's nothing exactly novel about death, and I have absolutely no affinity for who I was before that seven hour clock started ticking." Ionna smiled as a cloud of squeaking bats zipped overhead.

Iskander stared into the crevasse of his crossed arms.

"I see." But not really.

"Hold on Iskander, I want to take some of that back." She straightened in her seat. "The crux of it is, I have a whole metropolitan area trying to kill me, document me, castrate me, and every solitary second of its ongoing failure is... infinitely amusing."

"That philosophy's not much use to anyone else, is it?" Iskander asked.

"Ha! Guess not. But if you're convinced that I have all the answers, then you could listen to me when I say that there _is _a next year. Or there might be one, and that's because, even for a rat, things can get better."

Iskander snorted.

"Get better? We are talking about the same town, right?"

"As you like it. But I speak with some authority, because if things do get any better, I will have taken part in it. Do you really think it was a couple of nerdy scientists that paid you for the power station job?"

"You're talking about the Resistance."

"You did want a non-crazy solution to your problem."

"Not crazy! Ion, those fuckers shot me! You can see my leg if you want!"

"Iskander, darling, if I swung that way I would have jumped your bones long ago."

"The—if you had been shot, you would take it more seriously!"

"Was I the one that shot you?

"You said you weren't Resistance."

"And I'm not."

Iskander broke a short silence.

"Then what are you?"

"Like you said. This is my town, and some of those lambda types do good work. So call me a fellow traveler."

"It's getting late," he said.

"True enough."

Ionna unfolded her long frame and rose to her usual height, ten centimeters above Iskander's head.

"You should stay the night here, though. It's comfortable and it's crab-proof, which is hard to come by in this part of town."

"Alright. I just realized that I'm not used to solitude anymore." He picked up his satchel as the houndeyes in the distance started acting up again.

"You don't have a problem with heights, do you?" Ionna led him into the utter blackness of stage right, guiding his hands to the treaded rungs of a ladder.

"This goes right to the top, where there's a sort of loft above everything. You sleep in style tonight, fifteen meters up with a big damn velvet curtain for bedding."

They made their way skywards, and for a while there was nothing but a rhythm of soft metal sounds in the dark. Iskander felt the shadows growing in on him, gathering around like old friends. Yes, this was familiar.

He stopped climbing.

"Problems?"

"I grew up in a mine, you know." He leaned back into space, and felt the nothingness sucking at his head and shoulders as he straightened his arms. "We had to climb a ladder like this five times a day."

Ionna came up to the level of his kneecaps and waited, dangling by one hand from a nearby cable.

"Well, maybe they're related. Factory twins."

Iskander shook his head back and forth, then resumed the ascent.

"I'm having an idea, though."

"Oh?"

"In that mine, eventually I was the last one left alive, but getting to that point took fifteen years. We really _survived_ there."

"Sounds like a swell deal," Ionna commented. "Except for the part where you actually lived like a literal rat."

"It doesn't need to be a mine," he said. "Tell you when we're at the top."

Once there, he discovered that Ionna's penthouse did not have a floor so much as it had rafters. Everything rested on wooden planks laid across I-beams. Between each length of timber were six centimeters of open space, leading all the way down to the stage below. The Champion of Rats crawled through the darkness and switched on, predictably, a par can theater lamp.

"If you want different colored light, just let me know." She grinned. "I've got gel layers for fifteen shades of purple and some reds as well."

"I'm sure that's fine. Where's the other exit for this place?"

"There. Roof access." She jerked her thumb at a door near the sleeping quarters.

"So if they come in from backstage we can run into plain sight of every scanner for a kilometer around? This place isn't locked down tight enough for me."

"But isn't it irresistible? I never said my success was due to excessive caution. Anyways, what was that about the mines?"

"I just decided what I'll do. If I can't live down here, I'll leave. I'll go up north."

"That doesn't make sense, Iskander. People come to the city because it's even worse outside."

"They come here because they're desperate. But I'm not hungry or cold. I'm rich. And I think I can make it work out there if I take everything I own with me and set up shop."

"What, are you going to sleep in an antlion den?"

"No, I'd head for those mountains. They aren't used up and dead like the ocean is, you can tell. There's forest for miles and miles, and there must be valleys and ravines that the Combine never see, cabins and lodges too. With all my supplies, it could be just like living as a hermit in the old world."

"And what would you eat? They don't have canned food under every rock like they do here."

"Hell, what did people eat for the first four thousand years of history?"

"You've been reading, haven't you. You know how that can get you in trouble."

"Jesus, Ion, I think you're just frightened urbanite."

"And I think you actually want to die sooner rather than later."

"You'd be right, except for one thing. Like hell I'm going to live on my own, so I'm going to sniff out Miljan. While I'm hunting for that drunken bastard, do me a favor and keep an eye out for a good way to emigrate in style."

"I don't think you'll get past phase one. But I like your friend, so that's a plan I can get behind."

"We'll send you a postcard. Promise."


	8. Chapter 8

The river stank. Iskander was no stranger to unpleasant smells, however, and the odor of aquatic rot and industrial chemicals was far from overpowering. He tuned it out, preferring to dwell on the beautiful sound of running water and the coolness of the pungent breeze on his skin.

He had not been south of the citadel in a year, and even before that, only rarely. The hunt for Miljan had lead him to this one last spot, a long-abandoned hideout in the expansive basement of a workhouse backed up against the river. It was not a secure dwelling, as the main entrance was open to the sky through dozens of broken factory windows. Iskander was bathed in scanner-ridden sunlight as he made his way down the rows of cobwebbed sewing machines, glass crunching underfoot.

The door to the underground was a bulky iron affair that clearly did not match its surroundings. He was surprised Civil Protection hadn't stumbled upon it since his last visit.

"Knock knock, idiot," he muttered, reaching for the handle.

Clunk. It was barred from the inside. Predictable, now that he realized it.

"Shit." Pounding on the door was out of the question, and he no longer knew how to find the way in through the drains. Aimlessly snooping around was impossible when he could only chance brief sprints from cover to cover. He turned around and leaned against the door with a sigh.

Everything was arranged. Ioanna had divulged her participation in hacking and hijacking automated rail traffic, setting up large-scale smuggling networks for the Resistance. He could move his entire stash at least ten kilometers north in a single night. If only the other half could come too, and Miljan along with it. Their association was temporary; that much had always been clear, but surviving the outlands alone was beyond him. Ioanna was not a willing substitute, and none of the other rats were worth a damn.

Odd. There was a cigar stuck in the gap between door latch and frame. The end opened up when he removed it with his fingers, spilling ash in a dark stream. Someone had enjoyed (or not, as in his experience) the cigar within a period of several days, and the rough paper was familiar to his touch. Miljan had taken this cigar from their stash and left it here absentmindedly. Hadn't he? Yes, he had decided that he had.

"Now open up, you f—"

"Talking to yourself?"

Iskander's stomach performed an elegant pirouette, and he looked up to see a completely bald man standing before him, arms crossed.

"No," he answered, embarrassed despite himself. "Just talking to my friend."

The newcomer peered around with some interest.

"Do you have a mate around here? I didn't see anyone else come in with you."

"You were following me?" He felt like an idiot before he even finished.

"Exactly. And thanks for being so understanding about this; it makes my job easier."

"Your—"

"Job, correct. Now don't get all worked up, but I've lead Civil Protection to you, and we usually prefer it when you just walk on out with us." The collaborator fixed Iskander with a warm smile.

The stun baton snapped into Iskander's hands with all the speed of ten paranoid years, and he was across the room before the cigar even hit the floor. The collaborator probably blinked once before the baton landed on the bridge of his nose.

Unfortunately, the only result was a lot of nasally swearing, cluing Iskander in to the fact that he had not switched the weapon on. The whole river was full of scanners, lining up outside the workhouse's broad windows, the Battle of Waterloo fought with flashbulbs.

Dead, dead, so very dead.

He struck his betrayer again, leaving him with a marked resemblance to Ioanna, then ran. That bloody afternoon in the school building just kept on coming back, right down to the wailing of APC sirens.

"Suspect non-compliant, verdict authorized."

Civil Protection signed his death warrant with a radio call. They were all over the street now, and the collaborator appeared to be leaving them to it. The layout of the building reentered his recollection in his hour of need, and he skidded around the corner into a cramped stairwell. The stairs were stuffed into a cramped corner at the easternmost end of the building, with a window at every landing. A few bullets spattered at the glass up ahead, and he dropped below the sill as he passed. Climbing the rest of the way on all fours, he emerged onto a wooden fire escape.

Iskander paused for a moment, standing in the afternoon's soft sun with the city arrayed all about him. The Black Sea sparkled on the horizon, and the breeze seemed sweet-smelling now, tickling his arms. It really was nice being alive.

One the street behind him, a CP tossed a metal object into the air. It sprouted wings and the manhack fixed its red light on him as it flew. Iskander took a breath and jumped into the void that stretched above the chasm of the alleyway. Ludicrously, he closed his eyes in mid-flight, telling himself that he could always jump farther than expected.

Landfall. Mouldering terracotta splattered under his feet, tearing the knees of his pants. He hit, rolled, and regained his footing on the adjacent rooftop, never ceasing to make forward progress. A long stretch of joined roofs stretched out before him, and they beckoned like a highway.

The APC on the street charged ahead, hit a derelict pushcart and glanced off it into a pile of crates and tires. The lightweight vehicle lurched and spun, halting with one tired jacked up on a mound of debris. Civil Protection compensated with a wild spasm of gunfire.

Iskander heard the shots from out of sight behind a false facade. His feet felt lighter than air, and there was only one way to go. Running, long quick strides with a footfall for every two gunshots, as scanners closed in on the right, rising from the river. He was overtaking the water as it oozed between dams of trash, all of human civilization flushed down the waterway towards the septic ocean.

Flat roof, overgrown rooftop garden, hipped shingle roof, tin gable. All of them vanished beneath him almost as soon as he saw them, clearing the occasional gaps in quick airborne snatches of ragged breath. For what seemed like a kilometer, all the riverside buildings were low-lying and shared walls. They were storehouses and slums and small workshops, all varying heights like the teeth on the city's lower jaw. And no facade or gap had stopped him yet.

The pursuing manhack ran into a tangle of hanging rope as it skimmed lazily along, and spun off out of sight towards the riverfront. Half a dozen scanners were keeping pace, though, snapping photos so fast it was like a strobe light on his tail. He had to get off these roofs, find denser buildings with some overhead cover. If he could disappear from sight for a few minutes, there would be an almost infinite number of escape routes and hiding places for the CPs to search. If it was in a non-residential area, where everything wasn't either locked down or opened up, maybe they would give up the search in time. If Miljan was underground somewhere back there, he was a dead man.

His feet slid from angled, corrugated metal and down onto a patchwork of timber and plywood. Bullets rang on the roof behind him like church bells, and there were CPs shooting at him from across the river. Iskander looked at his feet and stamped down hard. Three more heavy blows, and he leapt skyward, the roof caving in beneath him on the way down. He hit the floor in a rain of nails, sawdust and panicked mice.

Off running again, body slamming a refrigerator that blocked a doorway and tipping it over. The fugitive was on his feet just after the deafening crash, pursued by more sirens now and startled voices from all around. Rooms opened up on either side of the narrow hallway, populated by gray shapes that spoke Bulgarian, Italian, Turkish and what was probably Romani. The loudest voice belonged to Wallace Breen, pontificating from an ancient television set as Iskander collided with something fleshy and surprised. The two bodies extricated themselves from each other, one faster than the other, and he heard bones crack as he lunged forward, using the citizen's hand as a launch pad. Screams of pain behind him, and guilt was an odd feeling when intermixed with terror. No! Time for either. Run and live to go north. His stun baton was juiced up now, and anyone else who got in the way would cop it good.

Iskander's heart was forcing its way between his ribs, and his ears were under siege from a roaring sound swelling up inside his head. He had to stop himself from charging through the window at the end of the hall, and took the stairs instead. One flight of steps found him in a closet-sized lobby with a black-plated surveillance camera that started chirping at him. Returning its reflective red gaze brought on several moments of fatalism, and he walked out of the building at a comparatively languid pace.

The street outside was empty and deceptively quiet. The manhack had gotten stuck in a gutter somewhere and was making an awful racket, but the sirens had stilled. A scanner whined on past, ranging along the river without seeing him. Iskander decided that he probably had thirty seconds before Civil Protection caught up, and less before the various drones reappeared.

He took a hard right out of the side street, nearly tripping as he stopped short in the shadow of a roadblock. Tall panels of inky metal spanned the roadway, bristling with cameras and sensors. The particle field in the narrow aperture appeared locked up tight.

Later on, when he looked back on the next few moments, Iskander had a hard time trusting his memory. There were some bullets, for sure, Civil Protection's mankiller hollowpoints shattering into sparkles and dust on the wall in front of him. With pistol rounds hissing and whining past his ear, he had seized a utility pole and flung himself into the air, sprinting horizontally up the side of a nearby building. Vaporized bullets had misted his hair as he vaulted over the checkpoint's rampart and rolled down the slanted surface on the far side.

The street on the far side had not been swept in years, a restricted zone. One of the scanners finally got its act together, giving off a self-satisfied hum as it closed in from fifteen meters up. That wild feeling took over in his legs again, and Iskander took off sprinting. He was well-fed, that was it. He felt like he could run forever, which was almost true in the tangled wilderness of this derelict neighborhood. Left, right, alleyway, straight on and right. He took every turn to cut line of sight, but the scanners had spread out at every street corner, swiveling in space like roving eyeballs.

Caught in the middle of a five-way intersection, the crumbling facade of a government building beckoned. Iskander ran between the pillars and closed the iron-studded doors behind him. Now the scanners would have to wait for the boots to catch up. He headed left, to a wing of hushed clerical offices slumbering beneath their dust quilts.

Up or down? The stairs leading to the second floor were blocked by opaque gloom, but there was a glow from below. He stamped into a subterranean parking garage, eternally illuminated by florescent lights that apparently fed off a major power line.

Iskander made for a metal door that was just visible through the stalagmite pillars of concrete. His footsteps were multiplied into thunderous echoes, and he thanked the resumed sirens for their loudness.

A sort of squeak sounded to his left, not like a rat, not quite like a headcrab.

He bent at the waste and peered into the interior of a gutted van, and the shadows receded by the second as his eyes adjusted. There was a glimmer of something reflective and slick, a bulbous shape clinging to the fabric of the back seat with four evenly-spaced limbs. Actually, there were two more and perhaps half a dozen in total—

"Ohfuck!"

The squeak came again, instantly followed by a hysterical chorus of screaming, squawking, gibbering insanity. Iskander tore away from the van as a flood of snarks flowed out onto the floor, launching their rounded bodies a meter into the air with a sound that resembled deranged glee. Their cries were answered all around the garage, and at once the nightmarish concrete dungeon was churning with alien life. Iskander realized how pathetically mild his horror had been earlier.

The door was two car-lengths ahead when he saw the padlock that dangled from the handle like a noose. Nothing resembling thought took place in his head; he banked right. Entire hives of the tiny predators were everywhere, spiraling down the concrete columns while breaking out in song. Several closed within half a meter and exploded. Iskander felt bits of shell hit his back, followed by a sensation of intense heat as fabric dissolved into a slurry of acid and cloth on his skin.

The lights cut out, the floor disappeared beneath his feet, and for a full second he existed in a cocoon of noisy dark panic. Iskander pitched face-first into bitterly cold water, an intake of shocked breath nearly drowning him then and there. After some flailing and skinned extremities, he realized that he could hold his head out of water with outstretched arms, and that he lay on a slanted concrete slab where the floor had collapsed. Also, the snarks had not followed, apparently balking at the water's edge and returning to their nests.

His eyes took in yet more darkness, and watery sounds surrounded him. He clambered onto a piece of dry masonry, so that the water only covered up to his knees. There was a passageway off to the right, promising escape, and this was exactly the sort of uncharted infestation that would cause the CPs to give up the chase in a few hours. But he was still breathing, breathing hard.


	9. Chapter 9

The Champion of Rats walked the city on her heron legs, a coil of scavenged copper wire in her right hand. Not the most glamorous expedition, but let it not be said that her wealth was due to anything but hard work. What had once been a street lined with bourgeois homes was now an arboretum in a restricted ward, choked with aspen and birch. A decade or two of wild growth had broken up the pavement, leaving it pitted and crumbled, forcing whole slabs of sidewalk into dusty heaps.

She traversed a puddle with a movement that was halfway between a leap and a stride. Summer was winding down, and the first of the acidic autumn rains had stripped the leaves from the trees. The sunlight produced enchanting colors in the runoff, a polychromatic reminder that a misstep could melt the soles on one's shoes. Overgrown areas of the city were now denuded, completely different from five days ago, when Iskander had given up his search for Miljan. That most intrepid of rats had gotten an entire city block sanitized and leveled, knocking out a branch of her river transit network in the process. Headcrabs served an important purpose by keeping citizens in their safe dwellings, but certain types of wildlife sent the authorities into full-on pest control mode.

Now that the Serbian associate was well and truly off the radar, Ioanna had a determined emigre on her hands. Or perhaps determined was too strong a word. Iskander stubbornly stuck to his purpose, but seemed overcome with dread at the prospect of facing the mountains on his own. She did her best to reinforce those misgivings with truthful (plus semi-truthful) counsel, and really, waiting for spring was a perfectly reasonable argument to make. Acting in character was the best method of stalling him, however, through mysterious elusiveness and flaky punctuality. She would invent setbacks with the train hijacking scheme, miss meetings, and communicate mostly through the system of Morse code mirror signaling he had shared with her.

It was all because Iskander was a useful person to have around. That he was intelligent and resourceful went without saying (good luck was an added bonus), as the stupid and ordinary people had all been killed off, to the tune of five and a half billion.

That was the funny part about being a hermetical legend—she owed most of it to a few valuable acquaintances. Two years ago, a talented young hacker had broken into a Civil Protection database on her behalf and re-uploaded Ioanna's facial ID file. Now when scanners saw the Champion of Rats, they registered only a post-sapient biotic, deceased after an unsuccessful struggle with tuberculosis. The fact that the corpse was walking upright did not unduly trouble their metal faculties—more evidence of a regime on auto pilot.

Ioanna paused to get her bearings. She knew perfectly well that a civil district lay just over the nearby canal and rail tunnel, but deliberate double-checking was the best way to avoid the lethality of everyday slip-ups. It was a few hundred meters to Fugee Freight station, just beyond a self-contained industrial complex she would introduce to Iskander when he arrived.

The discordant blast of a horn passed overhead, diving slightly down into the arboreal street to tangle up in the branches. The Combine had all manner of alarms and klaxons, and few paid any but the timekeeping sirens any mind. To her practiced ears, however, the sound was the signal of a CP raid in response to a census miscount. It had definitely come from the direction of Fugee Freight, which was odd, considering the level of security and surveillance in that district.

Ioanna picked up the pace, putting her scanner invisibility to use. She stomped through a small square full of clutching juniper, and the needles stuck in her pants to prick at her legs for minutes afterwards. The street rumbled beneath her feet as she passed over the buried railway. As usual, the traffic was towards Nova Prospekt. A trio of scanners slid eastwards overhead, en route to the miscount, and the foolishness of sharing a destination with them was not lost on her. A gunship tilted past, craning its supple neck to look back at the commotion.

By the time she decided that the sounds up ahead were gunfire, Ioanna was running. This was something else entirely. CPs did not shoot people, for all their careless violence. They had to account for each bullet expended, so their guns were only used in an official capacity. It occurred to her that the disturbance could mean the exposure of the power plant laboratory, just beside the train yard. She had become more and more involved in the project there, sucked in by the excitement against her better judgment. If the Combine snuffed out that particular endeavor, she would seriously consider abandoning the city and going north with Iskander.

Or so she thought at the moment, provoked by a veritable salvo of pistol shots as she pounded noisily up a factory tower gantry to get a better look. Ioanna reached the many-windowed room on the fifth floor, square and built like the bridge of a cargo ship. From there she could look out over the elevated highway that followed the drainage canals. The Northern Petrol plant loomed over the ramp where Sevastopol Street merged with the highway, and there were APCs parked dangerously close by. Yes, there were CPs in the annex adjoining the plant for sure; they were shouting through their voice filters.

This was a terrible place to stand, with the police so worked-up and trigger happy. It would be worse still once Iskander arrived, him being scanner target par excellence. Ioanna turned to leave, only to be interrupted by the distant sound of shattering glass. She spun back to the vantage point, and yes, there was a broken window overlooking the highway now. Gradually, she put more stock in what she had seen in the corner of her eye. It had been a lithe figure swinging out from the roof and crashing through the glass feet-first.

Now there came a distinctly female shout, followed by a series of complaints from the CP Dispatcher, mourning the incapacitation of several officers as their transmitters flat-lined.

"What the hell is going on?" Iskander asked.

Ioanna started so badly that she hiccuped.

"_Skata!_ Iskander! Let's get you somewhere less obvious."

She ushered him back down the iron staircase, still tempted to return to the window and watch.

"So there's some sort of—"

"Violence! Yes, my Abkhaz apprentice. Violence and possibly heroics."

They entered a dim storeroom one level down.

"But mostly, I think it's just Civil Protection hauling away a residence in violation of census. Nothing new, and most of them will probably avoid Nova Prospekt."

"I think I sent some people there myself," Iskander muttered. "When I got into that chase on the riverfront."

"Don't think that way. They never really need a reason to do it." She did not sound terribly convincing, most of her attention still on Sevastopol Avenue. She hiccuped again. Ludicrous.

"Whatever you say. Are we ready to go? I want to see these trains I'll be riding before they take me north."

"Right, but I wanted to show you around a few buildings first. Some *hic* excellent real estate opportunities here." Fucking hiccups. She wondered if her standing in Iskander's eyes was irrevocably harmed.

"Why do I need to see more buildings when I'm leaving this town?"

She lacked a ready answer for that. Oh well, showing off the sleepy railyard a half-kilometer to the west wouldn't exactly expedite Iskander's departure. She was dying to know what was going on in the laboratory, though.

"Well, fair enough. It will be good to get away from here anyways, so we don't get caught up in a sector sweep."

The sounds of the raid became more routine as they moved away from the train station and power plant. Sirens and idling engines still wafted through the overcast sky, but the activity seemed less urgent, like a clean-up.

"I've never seen things so unsettled in this part of town," Iskander remarked. They were going back over the same ground, across the sunken tracks and into the leafless urban thicket.

"Exactly what I was thinking. But then again, I heard two brazen knuckleheads recently broke into an electrical facility mere meters from the train station. The Combine are never as formidable as they appear."

"Ha! I would talk about good times, but—wait. You don't think that's what all the fuss could be about, do you? You said there were scientists—"

"I am praying not, Iskander. But I think they may have been overlooked. Those jackbooted fucks are never as formidable as they appear."

"You said that already," he observed.

"Well, I just wanted you to take it to heart."

"Consider it done, but I'm not sure how it matters. After all, I'm three times as _un_formidable as I appear."

"I don't disagree with that assessment." She steered them into a long line of boarded-up storefronts for overhead cover. "Except, that is, when someone pairs you up with a half-mad chetnik. Or a talkative Vort, for that matter. One day soon we're going to surprise them, you know."

"Uh oh. I hear pointed vagueness. Say what you mean, Ion."

"My grandparents were communists."

Iskander blinked.

"Until the Americans killed them, that is. They met in college, and kept journals. I can think of them sometimes, writing pamphlets and waiting for the revolution."

Grandparents and Stonehenge occupied the same time period in his mind, but Iskander's eyes narrowed at the last word.

"Revolution."

"Aye. Theirs didn't pan out quite the way they expected. But I think if they were here today... well, my grandfather would be very excited."

"But who are you expecting to—"

"Us. Them. People. The species. Homo sapiens, Iskander, _everyone._"

"Everyone? By which you mean Drinkers! Ioanna, get that thought out of your head. The Drinkers are never going to do anything, ever again. They're vegetables, stalkerbait. Hardly even human anymore. And you want a revolution?"

"I don't _want _one_, _so much as I think we may _get _ one."

"Get one from who, Father Christmas?"

Ioanna swallowed a hiccup with an immense effort. They entered the vine-encrusted lobby of a tower block, stepping over fallen girders and houndeye droppings.

"Iskander, pretend for a minute that you are in fact my protege and listen to me."

"Shoot."

"The citizens aren't who we thought they were. There are a few thoughts I've had about them, and you had better listen seriously and give them a fair shot because I haven't discussed them with anyone else."

The chittering of headcrabs sounded from somewhere down a hallway, but they ignored it.

"I posit that the populace is ready to rebel because of several factors. There is no possibility of a spontaneous uprising, but spontaneity is not required."

She held up a bony index finger.

"First of all, the citizens are allowed no organization or social structure beyond whatever naturally occurs in the residences. This means that they have no important figures or parties and will readily accept new leadership. It also means that there are no high-profile collaborators amongst their numbers, which brings us to the second point, which is that loyalty to the regime is not encouraged or ingrained. Breen's control over the city is based entirely on coercion."

Hiccup.

"Thirdly, very few of the citizens are given jobs. While the others rely on the regime for food, water and medical care, it is crucially important that they receive these goods and services for free. Although obedience is enforced, nothing is expected in return. Thus, the Combine have foregone a major method of control, and the majority of the population spends its days in idleness, doing whatever it is they please with their time.

Ioanna paused.

"I suppose this next is point number three B, because it is related. The citizens are not allowed entertainment, only limited programs broadcasted from the citadel, containing mostly Breen's obtuse and uncharismatic ideology. They can have neither alcohol nor drugs nor sex and are therefore without life's chief vices and diversions. All this adds up to the fact that the regime has failed enact any non-violent measures ensuring the compliance of the population. They have chosen not to utilize the very well-established method of keeping one's subjects busy, sapped and satiated. Life in the housing blocks is miserable and without reprieve. However, it is at once too miserable and not miserable enough. They fear, but that fear is too seldom realized to truly be repressive. They lack the creature comforts and relationship of exchange and obedience that would make them settle for their lot in life."

She stuck her head out the side door of the building and scanned the area outside. Beckoning for Iskander to follow, Ioanna ran for the entrance to a park across the street, a tunnel of vegetation formed by a large arbor trellis.

"Here we are; it's easy to stay hidden in here until the buildings start up again. Anyways, fourth and last point: The citizens do not, for obvious reasons, have significant family ties. Although distant relative and even sibling relationships may survive in some cases, the Combine have taken care to break up households. Since no children have been born since the beginning of the regime, and chemical impotence makes romantic relationships unusual, the family unit is no longer important or common."

Surrounded by bird calls and flanked by a lecturing folk legend, Iskander looked around at the shadowy wilderness with a dazed expression.

"Since the Combine also split up groups in order to mix ethnicities and defunct religions, the citizens are a collection of individuals, rather than a community. You may say that that makes us disunited and weak, but I say it makes us ruthless. I say it makes us just humans against Breen."

She did not look up as an enormous crow launched itself from the undergrowth to their right and flew away screaming.

"Punitive measures, reprisals of any kind can have no effect on us. No citizen will be moved if his actions bring down suffering on his neighbors. No circle of nationals or co-religionists can strike out on their own. Most of all, no father can bite his tongue and accept indignity out of fear for what Breen might do to his child. If you have no relatives, no fellows, there is no one the regime can threaten or cow. Only you can answer for your actions. Dictatorships rule societies, but I think what we have here is a mob, and a mob that can be made to cry for blood at the proper moment."

Iskander halted as they reached the edge of a large pond. Reeds grew thick out to the deep water in the center, where wild swans and seabirds cruised in lazy circles. The citadel was framed by branches near the far end, and he could not decided if he had stopped to listen or to look.

"The crux of my argument is that humanity has nothing left to loose. And we _are_ humanity, because not a single one of the old labels or categories exists anymore. They have taken all of them, and now they have united a species that no longer values its own life."

She stamped her foot, startling a trio ducks.

"The results of the yearly census for each district of the city is public, did you know that? Every single person living here can watch our numbers go down, even with all the immigration from elsewhere. They spend the whole year watching people die from whichever diseases aren't allowed to be treated, watching them take their own life or be murdered or most of all packed off to Nova Prospekt. And then they get to hear the numbers, and do the math. There's no generation, no future, the whole human race is finished and on the way out as things stand. They have _graphed_ and _quantified_ our own extinction and expect us to watch it happen."

She looked at Iskander's face. It was difficult to read, but maybe it meant something that he had no ready reply.

"And that's why, oh most clever rat of all my rats, I think one day you are going to wake up in the very biggest, loudest firestorm since the war, and you are going to be very, very, surprised."

An ululating metallic groan erupted from the citadel, fanning out across the city. Louder than any siren, the grinding noise wavered, dissipated, then was let out again.

"What the hell is that?" Iskander exclaimed. When any Combine creation made a sound, it was usually expressive enough to make its meaning apparent. This new emanation was telling him to run, an enormous doomsday bell pulsing up and down with a ponderous weight.

Ioanna squinted at the horizon, scrutinizing the three kilometers of angular iron plates that stood there.

"It's moving," she said.

"You tell me it's fucking moving—" Iskander had a momentary vision of the whole edifice sprouting legs, then saw that she was right. The thin (he reflected that it was actually the size of an oil tanker) panel that seemingly floated beside the western face of the tower was rising. No, actually, it was shortening itself somehow. A stack of segmented panels appeared in its shadow on the main structure, hundreds of thousands of tons of metal tilting and wobbling and rearranging like it was cardboard. They too ascended slightly, and tucked themselves inside the interior. Several additional sets of ribs were now visible, features that were actually bristling with aircraft bays, instrument panels and paraphernalia when viewed through a telescope.

"It looks like... it's on alert."

From either side emerged jets of fine black mist, as if the Combine favored the city with rain.

"What is that? That's—"

"A lot of scanners."

"There's your revolution," Iskander remarked, not sure if he was being sardonic or serious. "And it is a lot of scanners, I agree. Ioanna, the bounty on my head sort of pressing on my mind here."

"Agreed. I say we look at the trains another day."

The scanners were making their way north like a stormfront.

"And you, Iskander, should be underground as soon as possible. Make for our meeting place, but duck into one of those empty houses if that cloud of cameras gets close. Most of them are crab-free because the wildlife on that street scares them off."

"And you?"

"I can't pass this up. If that's my revolution, I want to go watch."


	10. Chapter 10

The vibrations made him sit up. Then he walked outside the rooms of the deepest level for the first time that week.

It must have been a tremendous disturbance to make the iron pipe above his bunk shake, and now it positively sang. The whole ventilation system hummed with the reminders of the world above, suffering a year's worth of deterioration in the process.

Miljan decided that his proximity to the citadel was the cause. He had never operated this close to downtown, where the checkpoints closed in like the center of a web. Naturally, he was only here because of Ion. The fallout shelter that contained her treasure trove had also yielded a folder full of maps, displaying similar shelters around the city. This vault, or rather the deepest floor of it, had been his home for an increasingly unquantified period of time.

His home was hidden, it was impenetrable, it was beautiful. With his wealth arranged lovingly at forty meters deep, he felt less and less need for all the tiers above him. They were clean—he had spent a week combing every cubic centimeter of space for any life form whatsoever—but they were also nearer the sky and unimportant. So long as he kept the ponderous doors outside his sleeping quarters shut, he could be sure that he was safe. Upstairs, a wall might cave in and admit a headcrab, a wire might short out and electrify a railing, a bacterium might ooze through a keyhole, but none of that could ever shake the mortal certainty of the fourth floor.

Today, however, he stood poised at the upper limits of the second story, one short elevator ride from the shallowest level of all. Roused by the vibrations, he considered ascending, and undoing the lead panels to uncover the clear viewing port in the blast doors, but there was no telling who could be looking back at him by chance.

Yes, that was wise. What went on outside was not any concern of his. Better to return home. His curiosity was simply a byproduct of his sober state, a novel sensation now that he had reduced his daily alcohol intake. Miljan had calculated the day of his last happy hour quite accurately, yet had erected mental walls against applying that arithmetic to the water and food supplies. There were material reasons for visiting the surface, and he often resolved to do so. Always, however, he dissuaded himself by reflecting on the hours of work it took to dismantle and reinstall the camouflage outside the blast doors.

And besides, there was no need to expose himself to the city and jeopardize all the life that surrounded him here, keeping him company. The sunlit world was dead and never coming back. Ten years of his life weighted his chest, a leaden epitaph. He imagined that he could remember every minute of planet Earth, inventing memories of himself at six months old.

Miljan returned to his forty-meter womb and sank into the pile of crates and rice sacks. He breathed deeply, eyes shut tight as he returned their embrace.  
.

.

.

Iskander looked at the pile of dull concrete cubes that made up the apartment building and stuffed his hands in his pockets. He did not want to cross the street and go in, but standing behind the shelves of this storefront was getting old. The housing block was a rather loosely-regulated place that Miljan had frequented, making it one of his primary trading posts. A very large Israeli presided there, having cowed the other opportunists so that commerce and not collaboration was permitted.

The city was in a frantic state now, with scanners in a steady airborne matrix overhead and APCs tearing down both sides of streets with no regard for patrol schedules. If Iskander could pass through the apartment without any hassles, the interior of the city block would beyond would provide cover almost to Ioanna's theater. A healthy dose of paranoia was all that was required to see him there.

Stepping into a cramped space full of untrustworthy people at such a time was making his instincts revolt, however. Miljan could have hoped for a welcome, but he was insure of his reception if Shalit were not present.

Well, nothing for it. Iskander fast-walked into the street as helicopters rattled overhead. The citadel had been launching projectiles every few minutes, large canisters that made their way to the horizon in lazy arcs. Perhaps being among other people was a good idea, as scanners were always slow to pick faces out of a crowd. He reached the entrance steps at a sprint, hearing electric motors coming down towards the junction. The glass panel in the door had been papered over with twenty-year-old old periodicals. With the wind of onrushing APCs on his neck, he snatched at the handle and slipped sideways through the crack.

Immediately, he stepped onto someone's foot. The lobby was packed with people, lucid, talking people. Iskander stood pressed against the metal knob of a mailbox, too stunned to close the door as the Civil Protection vehicles whistled by outside. His knee was butting into the intense conversation of three Drinkers seated on the floor beneath him. More residents occupied the stairs, looking down on the proceedings with bleary eyes and listless postures that betrayed their recent water intake. All of it was nearly unheard-of, and Iskander inched along the wall, unsure of what to do but make for the rear entrance.

"Hello there! Alexander, is it?" Shalit's vivacious bulk emerged from a circle of other men, and he beckoned at the rat.

"Something like that, Iskander responded, looking first at Shalit's mustache and then at his feet. He had done good business here in the past, but everything about this building seemed unsafe right now.

"Never seen you just drop in like this. Is Miljan with you?"

"Afraid not. He's busy with things over at Varnaya Place." There was what seemed like an entire village watching him now, and his every movement and expression betrayed his flightiness. Couldn't they see him squirm and grimace? There was the door, and the courtyard beyond.

"Well, a good afternoon to you nonetheless. You're a worldly man, so I know you cannot have come here for no reason."

That was a pointed remark. Iskander swallowed.

"So what news have you brought us, Xander?"

"Well," he stammered, "what have you heard so far?" Stall, stall, and shuffle sideways toward escape.

"Nothing definitive. We have all seen the citadel. The city has not crawled like this since the last of the spetsnaz gave it a try." Even more people were listening now, drawn in by the baritone that ruled the building. "All I know is that the CPs have their sights on a pretty big fish. If they haven't already landed it. You cannot fight back and get away at the same time; you would know that best."

People around the room shook their head, and some even voiced outright denials. He had never seen anyone contradict Shalit so openly, and some of those nearest belonged to his clean water crew.

"That seems a fair bet," Iskander ventured.

"Of course, some of us here are of a different mind entirely. I say that they are using their old world brains too much, thinking like this is some chapter of the Bible. You will set us straight, won't you my friend?"

He was sure that being called friend by such a man entailed certain expectations beyond simple good will. Iskander maneuvered to put bodies between himself and Shalit, fully aware of how silly that was.

"I... really regret disappointing you." Perhaps he was overreacting. What would Shalit really have cause to do? But the crowd still closed in on him like the earth over a grave. "May be, could be that I was on hand at the start of the trouble. There was a miscount next door to Fugee Freight, and a chase of a struggle afterwards. Ion told me that."

That list bit just sort of slipped out. The crowd rippled a little, and Shalit's face became unreadable.

"You don't say... Talk much to Ion, do you, Iskander?"

_That_ little detail had earned him the right name. He began to sense that now the citizens regarded him as possibly threatening.

"We keep each other appraised, at least when we run across anything of consequence." Iskander's chin lifted a little, and he felt free to push forward to the door. Really, he did not need to bluff. He was on the way to the theater to meet her, after all.

"You are a man of unusual acquaintances, my friend. Do keep us in mind if you learn anything of greater specificity. We live such uneventful lives here."

"And I trust you will do the same," he answered. "I can only be one place at once."

"Give my regards to Miljan, and tell him we must drink and recollect somewhere."

"I hope to see him soon."

"Safe day to you, Iskander."

"And to you, Shalit."

The Drinkers parted before him now, despite the fact that their headman was far from fully convinced. The back door was only connected to its lower hinges, and he left it tilted and ajar as he stepped out into the deck at the building's rear. More unfamiliar emanations from the citadel reverberated around the expansive yard. Perhaps half a dozen five-story residence halls formed the borders of the block, hemming in a triangular space that was divided between sheds, gardens and parking lots. After passing through here, Ioanna's theater was easily reached through a series of alleyways and a covered second floor walkway.

He started forward, plotting his course from cover to concealment. Gradually, it dawned on him that it was only marginally less noisy and populated out here than it had been in the lobby. Drinkers lined the balconies of the south-facing walls, the citadel that was there every day of their lives suddenly an entertaining spectacle. A large group of men stood around an open fire in one of the fallow gardens, roasting houndeye meat (not appetizing but a predator of more tasty animals) and chattering in Hungarian. Their activity and indeed their very presence was illegal, but that did not seem to matter today. Iskander realized that nothing he had seen earlier was so strange to him as this city block. There was a consistent buzz of conversation, curiosity, even excitement. He recognized a definite atmosphere, that was it, an atmosphere of something. Used to hushed streets and oppressive silence, Iskander was badly put-off now that there was something resembling a _city_ again. People lived here. For a few moment it would feel like it.

He stepped over a short brick wall and paused before a tin garage. There was some new graffiti near the corner; paint was running down through the grooves in the metal. It appeared to be a large upside-down letter Y. Done in bright yellow, there was something familiar about it.

A dropship swooped low overhead, appearing to swim through the air with its moaning engines and ululating extremities. The black troop carrier crate slung underneath was an exceedingly rare sight, for Overwatch units almost never entered the city. Iskander took it as a sign to move on. The sky was clearing up as dusk approached, and an easterly wind promised to bring in the pollutants that made for a brilliant sunset. He felt instantly more comfortable as he stepped from the relative safety of the residential block and into the CP-haunted emptiness of the neighborhood beyond. The irony was not lost on him.

Twenty minutes saw him to the theater. Emerging from the orchestra pit, he found the space to be much more ominous when lit with natural light through the collapsed roof. There were all sorts of unfriendly shadows, and far fewer hiding places.

"Ahoj, rat!" came the call. Ioanna leaned against the railing of the elevated gallery, looking down on him with a grin. "Glade you could make it. Come up here from around back."

He ran into three spiderwebs and four missing floorboards on the way up. Ioanna had moved so as to place the lighting equipment between herself and the sky-filled hole.

"Well? She asked, still half smiling.

"Hello. 'Well' what?"

"Did you feel it? On the way over. By God, Iskander, it's positively _electric_ out there."

"I think I may know what you mean."

"Damn right you do. You wouldn't even call them Drinkers now."

Iskander sank into a duct-taped seat and accepted the dried fruit that she offered.

"Do you know what's going on, though?"

"No one knows exactly, but what's going on isn't the point. The beauty of it is that people actually care. They really want to know."

"But you don't? Know, I mean."

"Not for sure..." He could tell she disliked not having all the answers. "There are all sorts of stories, some farther-fetched than the others."

"For fuck's sake, Ion, tell me your favorite."

She pitched a chink of hardened peach at him.

"One reliable report I have heard was of fighting around the canals. I mean major gunfire, with chopper flying support. It never stayed in one place, and I think one reason everyone's so riled up is that the CPs weren't obviously winning."

"Not winning..."

And that simply doesn't happen, as you well know. They don't do standoffs; if anyone ever gets suicidal and armed, they crush them posthaste."

"So it must be the Resistance?"

"I don't think so, Iskander. They would never carry out an operation like this, not with their preparations f—" She bit her tongue and cast him a sharp glance. "Anyways, a group of rogue insurgents is possible, but unlikely. Really, all signs point to a fugitive, or collection of them, with balls the size of headcrabs."

"In that case we know it can't be your people," Iskander laughed.

"Oh, but the Resistance is involved. The fighting seems to be following the Underground Railroad, or at least certain stretches of it, and that means trouble for some of the stations. Their sentries are ready to make themselves scarce at a moment's notice, so they should make it out alright. I hope."

"I'll agree with you there. Those Railroad types can be pushy with the real estate, but they're a more decent sort, on the whole."

"Your praise is too grudging, given the work they do, but—"

She stopped, interrupted by the sound of a slow, ominous gong from outside.

"Breencast," she snapped. "And an unscheduled one. They must be getting serious about this."

Ioanna took off away from the stage, Iskander close behind. She kicked her way past a stuck door and scrambled up a wooden ladder, dislodging cupfuls of dust at each handhold. They reached a stone cupola an peered over the lip. A large digital display screen was attached to a faced opposite them, with Breen's stern, grandfatherly face shimmering on it.

"...confirmation of a disruptor in our midst, one who has acquired an almost _messianic_ reputation in the minds of certain citizens."

Ioanna hissed softly.

"His figure is synonymous with the darkest urges of instinct, ignorance and decay."

"Sounds like my kind of guy," Iskander quipped.

"Some of the worst excesses of the Black Mesa Incident have been laid directly at his feet. And yet, unsophisticated minds continue to imbue him with romantic power, giving his such dangerous poetic labels as the One Free Man, the Opener of the Way."

"No. Shit," Ioanna whispered.

"Let me remind all citizens of the dangers of magical thinking. We have scarcely begun to climb from the dark pit of the evolution of our species' evolution. Let us not slide backward into oblivion just as we have finally begun to see the light. If you see this so-called free man, report him."

Free man. Was that familiar?

"Civic deeds do not go unrewarded, and contrariwise, complicity with his cause will not go unpunished. Be wise, be safe. _Be Aware._"

The old man's face winked out, and Ioanna released a heavy breath.

"Jesus tits, Iskander, what happens now?"

"Are you serious? You're supposed to be telling _me_ that! What the hell was Father Turtleneck going on about anyways?"

"He means," she said with an annoying weight of emphasis, "that Gordon Freeman has returned. Hell, that Gordon Freeman exists."

"Oh, _fuck,_ are you telling me that the revolution is going to get kicked off because of a bad pun?"

"You've never heard of him, have you?"

"I grew up underground, remember?"

Ioanna dropped below the parapet of the cupola.

"Well, get down out of sight or you never will find out."

Iskander's feet kicked in the open air for a few seconds before they found the landder.

"Dr. Freeman is, or was, as it turns out, a superstition of the prewar days." She dropped down a rung every four of five syllables. "You know of the whole Black Mesa thing, don't you?"

"Mineshaft, remember? I got the short, sarcastic version once but never bothered checking the facts. It's one of those delicate topics, you know?"

"I know. Well, Freeman was a physicist at Black Mesa, as were several of the Restistance leadership. They keep that to themselves, though."

"How wise."

"Anyways, after the Incident, while everyone was running headlong for the cities, a number of high-ranking scientists, Breen among them, became public figures as consultants to the U.N. I was in the U.K. At the time—"

"Where?"

"England? Bad teeth and tea?"

"Oh," Iskander lied.

"I lived there and watched a lot of American news. These analysts had a blank check for organizing the response to the portal storms, but spent a lot more time covering their own asses. Part of that meant scapegoating, and Freeman got a double dose of it. Deliberate sabotage, subsequent attacks of security forces and eventually a nuclear attack on the facility."

Iskander whistled.

"Of course, the U.S. government was doing a horrendous job of handling things, their advisers had no clue, and the public was in no mood to believe one word they said. Most people had their own, crazier explanations for the events, and as it turned out, such views were entirely compatible with the loud protestations of a few crackpot scientists. These fellows were spreading all sorts of horror stories from Black Mesa wherever they went, and chief among them was that Gordon Freeman had been framed."

"This fellow's starting to sound like a regular folk hero," Iskander remarked. "'cept for the scientist part."

"Not only was he framed, he was the only reason that half of them got out alive. Interpol had a warrant out for him, but you had a whole crew of Black Mesa survivors insisting that was pointless because Freeman had died performing a crucial operation that had spared the world from a brutal invasion."

"Gee, that sounds familiar, doesn't it?"

"There's the rub. Fed-up people in their millions believed the heresy about Freeman, but that became somewhat irrelevant when 99% of them died in the actual brutal invasion."

"You seem to remember this well."

"The 1% don't tend to forget."

"You must be at least forty, then." Iskander peered into Ioanna's face, trying to see past the mask of her broken nose.

"Practically a pensioner, yeah."

"So how do people still care about Freeman, if the world he saved went to shit?"

"Well, that's somewhat inexplicable, barring the obvious hope for a repeat performance."

"Old Breenscreen certainly feels the heat."

"In actuality it all comes down to the Resistance. When the scientists took their leadership role, it got out into the ranks that Freeman might have survived the Incident. Or so some of the top brass believed." They made their way down to the stage , and Ioanna began the long climb to her loft. "Naturally, this inspired the notion that he would return."

"And do what?"

"What wasn't important. The expectation of his return was enough to fuel some actual proselytizing among the citizens. It became a sort of go-to ideology for the Resistance. The leadership didn't particularly like it, but eventually bowed to its persuasiveness and exploited it to deflect attention from their own affiliations with the Incident—riding on the coattails of someone who had been redeemed from his Black Mesa past."

"And none of that bothers you?"

"I am a pragmatic woman, Iskander. I know that I fraternize with the people who destroyed the world, however indirectly. And I will admit that the cultlike adulation of Freeman's name is slightly unnerving."

More dropships passed by, and the roof shook, dislodging a few more bits of ceiling and dropping them into the third row.

"But then again, the war pretty much put paid to all the organized religions..."

"Aye, it certainly cured my cousin of his piety," Iskander interjected.

"...and Freeman is a sort of substitute, an irrational and distant savior."

They reached the rafters hideout, and Iskander sat on the lip of the platform while Ioanna rummaged about in the fold folds of piled curtains.

"Every day I see more and more reason for associating with these heroes."

"Don't be sarcastic, Iskander. I intend to disabuse you of that prejudice tonight. Come with me to the laboratory you so happily supplied with power and see all my reasons for yourself."

"What? Ioan, what in hell would I want to do that for?"

"The distant savior is not so distant anymore, my rat. You survive by statying on top of things, and things are about to change."

"They may change for you," he retorted," what with your Railroad dismantled and the Breenies cracking down twice as hard. But in case you forgot, my entire purpose here is to bug out so I can live through times like these, not going and trying to swallow the stun baton. Going anywhere a near a Resistance outpost right now is just... I'd rather open a coffee shop outside Fugee Freight."

"Our goals can still coincide," Ioanna said softly. "I can still get you out of the city if you cooperate, and with all the important work to be done along the way, I might be able to send you off with twice the resources."

"If I cooperate... meaning what, exactly? The terms of your assistance have changed." Iskander panted both feet on the ladder and stood, so that his torso extended a meter above the hole in the floor. Her face grew cold.

"Like you, Iskander, recent events have forced me to take my time here altogether more seriously. I cannot be in the business of charity, but it is with your best interests at heart that I urge you to come with me and learn enough to make a fair judgment."

"You are giving me an ultimatum," he said flatly.

"Please, this isn't some sort of conscription. I know your opinion of the Resistance, but I have certain commitments, and if what you saw today isn't enough to change your opinion... Well, I;m not expecting you to become a revolutionary, but at the very least I will be extremely preoccupied these coming days. Whatever your decision, you must tag along, otherwise my prior engagement will leave no time for you."

"Yet I have all the time in the world to wait. You saw to that." Iskander began to descend. "When things calm down, I'm sure you'll know where to find me. I think my time would be better spent seeing if all this noise has flushed out Miljan." To his surprise, only silence followed his words, and silence escorted him to the floor. The sky beat down on him from its perch on the ceiling. He turned his back on the shadows all around and dropped into the orchestra pit, on his way to whatever rathole first presented itself.


	11. Chapter 11

The freezing water surged into his shoes again, squeezing between his toes as they shivered in the swamp of wet soles. Its depth increased as he made his towards the pile of supplies; he had not realized that the floor was slanted. The jet of water that had punctured the wall of the elevator shaft was slackening, but not fast enough. Some of Miljan's less-vital possessions were now drowned in the cold abyss of the lower level, and he could only hope that the rest could be shifted upstairs in time. No time to mourn for lightbulbs and winter clothes. Rush, rush.

Citadel activity had only increased in the twenty-four hours since the first commotions. First had come the tremors, then silence, then a cannon-like sound that brought curtains of water down on him from the ceiling.

He clapped his arms around three large sacks of rice, lifting them from the top of a crate before they soaked in possibly toxic water. Perishable goods were first priority. Now that the booze was safe, anyways. Miljan trudged up the stairs, wondering between frantic breaths whether the flood would reach the entrance of his shelter. The possibility of it rising farther was something he refused to consider. A little more of the wall collapsed with a now-familiar thud, and the thundering sound slackened with the pressure. An entire water main must have buckled to produce this much volume, spilling its stagnant contents into the city's bowels. Counting on the shelter's groundwater pump was no longer an option.

"Wish... I—could swim... damnit."

Miljan started down on his seventh trip, wondering whether a hereditary heart attack would get him before the water could. Things were starting to float around now, and he shut the door to the submerged level so none of the canned goods would be swept down. A piece of sharp lead stuck in his palm as he swept a box of pencils and other superfluous supplies into the swirling foam. Vulnerable items took their place on the crate (how in hell was he supposed to lift _that _when it was full?), and he paused for a moment to take stock. Now for the last plastic cooler, splashing through a curtain of water on the way. The cascade in the elevator shaft was still plunging down past this level, but there was more runoff in the ceiling with every passing minute.

Struck by inspiration, Miljan gathered everything that seemed buoyant and watertight, then began shoving the raft of supplies along with his foot. Plastic packets and bottles bobbed over the edge of the elevator shaft into the boiling pool below, and he slammed the door behind them. Let the water carry them upstairs. And godamnit, why hadn't he thought of that before? He might have saved some of the items downstairs, now left behind and,

"Gone, gone gone! Gonegone!"

His sing-song voice ran laps around the constricting space, reflecting off the water to leap back on him, distorted and childlike. Off again, off again, towards the stairs as fast as was possible with the bulky container slamming against his knees. As a light fixture exploded overhead in a starburst of sparks and more water, the floor roused itself and made a lunge for his ankles. _Slap_, into a pulsing darkness that prickled his face and straining eyes with sudden cold. Sounds articulated themselves as heartbeats, distinguished by variations in pitch, duration and distance. The concrete was rasping at his palms, but it felt farther away with every passing moment.

"Zeka maya!" Grandmother put her hands on her hips. "Moj drag..." There was light now, late afternoon in springtime. "...why do you try to carry so much? Far too thin for that, silly boy."

He looked up guiltily, conscious of the pile of broken clay tiles at his feet.

"Miljichka, you will snap like a twig and have a knot in your back for the rest of your life like your uncle. And then you have to go back to the clinic so often you will might as well live there."

His gaze wandered over to the houndeye that was tied to a post in front of the house. It drank greedily from a trough.

"And once you live at the clinic I will have to ride that terrible bus every Wednesday to come feed your fat cheeks with a spoon. Now go find a bag to pick up those pieces—_only a few at a time—_and if you see your stupid brother tell him that if he starts drinking before dusk I will—"

Miljan scratched his nose and wondered how people could drown in bathtubs no deeper than the houndeye's water trough. He wanted to go pet it, but he knew how Grandmother could shout louder than a whole pack of houndeyes.

"Miljan! Look at me when you don't listen!" His eyes snapped back to Gran, and now Iskander was standing just behind her, dressed in Dr. Breen's turtleneck. He also sported stalker legs, but Miljan knew that his friend has been born with them and it was impolite to bring them up. They caused him no trouble, anyway.

Grandmother spun around and saw Iskander. Miljan knew what was about to happen; the sky was getting brighter as he backed away, heart swirling around in his chest.

"Who are _you?_"

The houndeye knocked over the trough and began straining at the leash as the house melted like candle wax, running smoothly across the ground towards the three-legged predator.

"Miljan!" Grandmother screeched with Ioanna's voice. "Get those things to your brother and _run!_"

The tiles—she meant the tiles. He scooped up as many as he could and bolted through the space between metal-legged Iskander and the liquifying cottage.

"HURRY! Then come back for the rest! And me!" Grandmother Ioanna stayed rooted to the spot, facing Iskander, the source of the terrifying light.

The freed houndeye zipped past his flapping shoes, and the hilltops to the north were rising and tilting, rolling up carpet-like on their towards him. Knin's rooftops appeared upside-down, clinging to the underbelly of the world as it swayed from east to west five kilometers at a time. The light behind him was too thick to see through, but everything was still back there. He had to carry, carry everything, and then go back for gran.

Some hours later, after she assured him that the world had finished beginning to end, he sat on the cold concrete by the blast doors and listened the xylophone of water droplets. Flooding had ceased; now only a thin film of rust-colored liquid seeped from the wall. The plane of smooth ink that marked the border between the submerged shelter and his own truncated realm now stood two steps down from the upper story. It had risen a centimeter during the previous hour, as water settled out of various fractures and clogged pipes, but Grandmother had pronounced that it would climb no farther than the last step.

He believed her, as she was of incredible age and had helped him work out several important facts. Most importantly, he was not going to die. Miljan had watched his hands begin to melt in the heat of dark energy flares. With every trip to dry land, grasping at clastic piles of belongings, there had been less and less of his fingers. When the last of the supplies was safe from the water, and he collapsed ready to die from the burns, she had told him to not be such a girl.

As it turned out, Miljan had gone off his head just a little bit, cracking under the pressure of the moment. Lucky that Grandmother was there to sort him out, to tell him that Knin had evaporated years ago, that he was hiding safe underground unless he let his balls give out on him and have all his things ruined and who the hell was this Iskander? He sounds like a Muslim.

Now they were both safe, although he still felt a bit like dying after putting his tendons and lungs through the ringer like that. He lay splayed out on the floor, each extremity touching an emblem of his success. Bottles rattled and tinkled as his trembling legs brushed against them. It was a beautiful sound. Through a low point in the ridges of bags, he could see Gran's headscarf where she sat on a barrel.

"That was very well done, Miljichka. I know you will help me like that again, when it's time to get ready for Saint Sava's day. Now have a palačinka."

He nodded in exhaustion, a can of sweet potatoes in his hands.

"I think this wasn't so bad after all," he murmured. "Sure, we lost some things, but now we can live up here. Everything beneath is drowned, so it's a sure thing that this floor is ours. All locked up and... homely."

Her wrinkles nodded judiciously.

"I think I may even open up the peep-hole sometime, to let some natural light in. No one can see through from outside, after all."

The citadel let out a groan from somewhere above. Miljan heard only the soft tapping of grandmother's cane.


	12. Chapter 12

That scuffing sound again. Shoes on dirty pavement. Ioanna lengthened her stride in mid step, making for an awkward sort of forward lurch. She was walking, but at the upper speed limit of what could charitably qualify. It took a certain amount of will not to break out of her measured pace and sprint, for something about this movement made her joints feel stiff and infirm, as if her legs were too short. She felt as graceful as a strider.

Yet the fact remained, even as she turned into the third outwardly-blind alley, that someone was following her, and that someone could not be shaken. He disdained to conceal himself from her, hanging back but stalking into the open during longer stretches of abandoned factory yard. He (it was probably a he) wore dull-looking garments of a nondescript nature, and carried no bags or weapons. How she had failed to elude him so far was an unnerving mystery, one that simmered and bubbled underneath the permanent lid she had built over her panic. Perhaps he had spotters.

That possibility pointed to both worst-case scenarios equally well—citizen headhunter collaborators or rats putting a lot of effort into a simple mugging. She had an unfounded concern that she was being driven somewhere by her pursuers, yet it was more plausible in this factory-speckled district than elsewhere. The various plants were separated by wide, straight avenues built for for trucks, trains and the occasional trade union parade, so actual escape route options were more circumscribed than the bristling maze of structures suggested.

This chase was about to end, though, just as it was starting to get irritating. One of Ioanna's better lodgings was on the other side of an elevated pipeline. If she could get in unobserved, they would have no way of knowing which of four locked doors, three gantries and a service tunnel she had disappeared into. Unless they were, in fact, herding her and they had spotters. Then it would be narrowed down a little, and she would have to spend the rest of the day wondering what exactly they had wanted with her. The citadel had come down out of alert, assuming its usual configuration after twenty-four hours of frantic activity, but the city was still unsettled. After an almost complete disappearance of security forces in some sectors during the height of the emergency, Civil Protection had clamped down hard, parading around every housing block in a show of force. She liked to think that some damage had already been done, however. The brief lapse in Combine authority was something to inspire, and some of the gamier citizens had even defied the CPs upon the restoration of civil order. So now there were bodies in the streets, and in a strange sort of way it made her happy.

Now was the time to run, a short dash and roll to put that pipe behind her. There were windows with a view on her from every direction, at distances from fifty to three hundred meters, but eyeballs in buildings couldn't follow her where she was going. One tight corner and the row of immense yellow doors confronted her. Third from left was unlocked as she had left it, and Ioanna slipped through the pedestrian access panel into the dark foyer of home. She bolted the gate for good measure and took two blind steps forward. The next door had a simple combination lock, and she didn't need light to find it. Her fingers read the numbers, manipulating them in the usual pattern. Done and done.

The light switch (such decadence!) on the inside wall was a less critical component, and she had to fumble for it. In here she had power and water and every convenience, while her pursuers sniffed at her cold trail in the wilderness where she had left them.

The switch was somewhere a few centimeters to the left of the—

_Click._

A spiked cone of metallic light washed out her vision, glaring into her face from a point midway across the room. Ioanna dropped to the floor and covered her eyes. Not exactly the move of a legendary survivor, she reflected, once it became clear that she was being lit up with a flashlight.

"Good day," said an accent. She couldn't pin it down, but it was there, and it overwhelmed that voice that bore it.

"Please stay there for a moment, Mrs. Ion. We don't want to use force."

No danger of that, Ioanna reflected, telling herself that her decision not to carry weapons had been long since validated, present uncertainties notwithstanding.

On went the lights.

"At least someone knows where the damn switch is," she muttered.

There were two men in the room. She blinked. No, three.

"Have a seat." The one with the accent gestured at the chair that she owned, surrounded by crates of her other possessions. His carbine bounced at the end of its sling as he did so. Both other men were similarly armed. "I take it Timur never had a chance to extend his invitation."

"He never got within range for conversation, no." Ioanna realized how small she looked, on the floor with her knees pulled tight against herself, gazing up the intruders. Fuck them! Didn't they know this was her city? She straightened. "Of course, seems he got his way anyhow, ha ha."

"My name is... Cesar." He was dressed in a tattered coat of vaguely military cut, with large collars that half obscured his stubbly face. "These are my associates. We are in haste and have no time to be polite. Tell us of your current employment."

"Fine." Ioanna lept to her feet, her eyes daring the gaunt man in the far corner to aim his rifle at her. "I admit it. I sell drugs! To little school children even! I know it's wrong, but I can't hold a job and those Colombians on the docks see it so cheap..."

"Ion, perhaps you don't understand the na—"

"What the _fuck_ are you doing in _my _house?" There was a surprised silence. "You're going to have to do an awful lot better than that at introducing yourselves."

"Ma'am," Cesar's accent was not even slightly rattled. "We know that you have had dealings with the Resistance, of a sensitive nature. As I'm sure you're aware, events have begun to accelerate, and we need you to hand over any plans or protocols you may have made with Captain Vance."

Come to think of it, the stock of his carbine sported a lovingly carved lambda.

"Well first of all, comrade Cesar, there's no Captain Vance. No more an officer than I am; he's a mad boffin just like the rest of them."

Accent looked slightly crestfallen.

"And secondly, I have never dealt with him directly, only through trusted intermediaries. Which you fellows are... not."

"Ma'am, please sit yourself down." His fingers made circular caresses on the leather of his hip holster. "It was I that brought you here, and not someone else. And that is because unlike some of my men, I bear no fondness for your particular form of renegade parasitism."

She leaned back, pointing her chin at the epaulettes on the coat, and gazed at her martial guest with half-closed eyes.

"So mark my words when I say that your, _reputation _will not cause me any distress if I have to to march you across town at gunpoint to wherever you have hidden your intelligence concerning rail traffic and the related contingency plans."

She doubted his identity less and less. Really, this was just like so many of the Resistance she knew.

"Now that's an interesting topic, Cesar."

"We came here with a very clear idea of what we need." He looked displeased that she had chosen to lean against the wall rather than sit all the way down. "And we want to be out of here as soon as that is accomplished."

"I can tell you where some documents are." Relief at her words, concern at her tone. "But little good they will do you, as all the more crucial particulars are in my head. Truly, I am insulted that you think I would simply stash such vital information where anyone could find it." Her voice rose in pitch, not all of it affected. "You who have done so much less for the cause of the Resistance than I, you should have come here with the proper respect. You have nothing to establish your credentials here, and your words have no authority with me. I have no reason to believe a word you say, and if you imagine you can pry anything from my head, then you can go to hell. Spit on your mothers' graves, by th—"

"Please!" Cesar held up his hand, and weapon jumped awkwardly on his back. "If you would cooperate, allow me to explain my situation."

"Damn right you will explain." She leaned forward across a tabletop now, pressing her victory. "I am deeper in the lambda's counsels than you, so how can you begrudge me anything?"

Cesar rocked back onto a plastic barrel with a loud exhale.

"Would you happen to have any water, ma'am? It's been a busy couple days."

"Sure I do," she chirped. "Your bodyguard's standing right next to it there. See the tap?"

His eyes bulged out a little bit. Running water, that's right, you barbarians. The other two fighters laid down their arms and drew canteens, looking more wan and underfed by the minute.

"Tell me," Ioanna, said, adopting an earnest tone now that she was against master of the house. "What the hell is going on out there? I've been had an itch in my legs like a schoolgirl all night, expecting a call at any minute. But instead, nothing. What the hell happened to us?"

"You heard about Freeman?"

"I heard a lot, but never knew what to listen to."

"Believe Breen then," Cesar uttered, taking the water jug offered him by the other rebel.

"And he is still at large?"

"Somehow, yes. The Railroad got hit pretty hard on his way out, though. Civil Protection clamped down all at once and we weren't ready for it, not in the slightest."'

"I never did find out how bad it was," Ioanna said softly.

"Bad. We lost a lot of— In short, it's not ever coming back. The expertise and the routes just don't exist any more."

"My condolences," she murmured. "And if the subject comes up with any of your people who _are _attracted to my parasitism, I hope you will extend them in their presence as well."

He favored her with a long look.

"I will do that. But frankly, Ion, the Railroad is the least of our problems at the moment. Freeman, with his special knack for turning tactical victories into overall catastrophes, has left us pretty much beheaded. No sooner did he get outside the Apron than the Overwatch swooped in and snatched up Cap— ...Eli Vance."

That left her with no ready answer. The echoes of water drops and the wind in the ventilation ducts became suddenly louder. Cesar was studying her face, but she could only sit there, thinking that the organization with which she had fraternized so much had suddenly become a mass of desperate outlaws with automatic weapons.

"That's..." She trailed off.

"That's more or less how I would describe the situation, myself," the partisan grunted. "With the Railroad went most of our lines of communication, and Black Mesa East was the vector for getting messages across the Apron. We'll be able to re-establish—"

"It was at his laboratory that they got him?"

"A power plant, yes."

So the portal project was gone too. Balls.

"So all that has left me without any immediate superiors. It's just the cells that I personally control, and some of the other surviving subcommanders in the urban outskirts. And frankly, everything is going nowhere fast. I can't get my colleagues organized, much less my subordinates. So I took personal initiative. And that's why I'm here."

Ioanna held up her palms.

"I still don't see quite what you're here for. Don't spare me the details; I have plenty of time."

"As you wish." He drank deeply from the jug. "There hasn't been much in the way of coordination, as I've said, but near as I can tell the whole Resistance is on a wartime footing now. We can't take the losses they're handing out, seemingly at leisure. I'm putting everyone I can on the move, in any direction, to make for a harder target. Lots of outlands groups are heading for whatever safe holes they can find. Me, I'd rather go on the offensive instead, put some pressure on Overwatch pickets to divert them from Freeman and let them know that we can hit back. I've heard of some business with a raid on Nova Prospekt. It's insanity, but at least it's the right sort of idea."

Ioanna shook her head with a slight smile.

"Now then ma'am, I know that you conducted some preparatory operations on behalf of Vance, regarding a contingency plan for a general uprising. I need access to everything you can provide me, to make sure we can protect or re-arrange our assets in case Vance divulges anything in captivity."

"Unthinkable," she said flatly.

"What? Ion, you may think highly of your own ability to keep secrets, but I put no faith in one scientist's endurance against Combine torturers."

"Not what I meant. 'Unthinkable,' he called it. The plan."

Cesar set down his drink and rearranged his legs on the barrel.

"Did he, now? Because it's something I may just think of."

Their eyes met.

"I know you don't waste your time," he continued. "Ion, if that plan of yours is tolerably complete, I have have a mind to stop pinning our foggy future hopes on it and put the damn thing into effect at once."

"I did tell you the title of it, right? It was carefully named."

"No doubt, and no doubt when Captain Vance looked it over, it did seem unthinkable. But I think you know what effect Freeman's name has had on the streets and what's more—" He cleared his throat. "They nearly destroyed us just now, in the last twenty-four hours. Most of what we've worked on over the last couple years is gone. It should be now." Cesar looked up. "I know you can make something happen."

"Champion of Rats," she answered. Ioanna wondered what his face would look like if she destroyed him, told him that the plan was nothing.

But it was far from nothing.

"You worry me a little, Cesar." She adopted a tone of levity. "I think your type almost preempted the Combine during the Cold War. But why don't I share my little pet project with you, and then you can try to convince me that you're not insane."

Ioanna rose to her feet.

"Follow me to the parlor, please. And leave your men here. As you say, there are very skilled torturers in town and the fewer in the know, the better."

She led him out the door, indicating to his subordinates that they could have another drink. They strolled down a long chamber lined with flaking green furnaces the size of buses, their innards choked with rust and slag and rats nests. With annoyance, she saw that the rebels had made their own entrance to her sanctuary with bolt cutters and acetylene torches.

"You keep the documents here?"

"Aye. Just your luck you caught me at the right dwelling. But in all honesty I was been pouring over these until dawn."

Ioanna halted in an ash-covered cul de sac, suddenly sheepish. Now that it came down to it, she _did_ keep the plans where just anyone could find them. They were mostly a memory aide, but they looked important enough. At least the notes were in Greek.

She ran her hand down the wall, leaving a trail in the white dust, until she came to a loose brick. So cliché.

"All I've heard of this is something about riding on Combine trains," Cesar said. "It sounds ridiculous, like we can just buy tickets."

"You're not far wrong," she answered, retrieving a heavily-annotated topographic map, wrapped around a black booklet. "Trains it is."

"But how is that possible?"

The map gave off a satisfying crackle as she spread it out on the floor, displaying an expansive view of the city, with the foothills to the north, and the jagged peninsulas to the south. The symbology was Soviet, the faded earthtones of forests and urban blocks probably older than she was.

"Possession is nine-tenths of the law," she mused. "And though Breen doesn't know it, we own the railroads. Every single one."

"But—"

"Though I suppose it would be more accurate to describe it as a timeshare arrangement, and a very recent one at that. Listen to the wisdom of old Ion, Comrade Cesar, and tell me, what is the one reason we are able to operate here at all?"

He looked at her blankly, hands on his holster again.

"Wrong. The reason is that almost everything in the city is automated. Controlled by computers with no one to balance the books or keep watch over it all. And so anything that isn't surrounded by CPs, we can reach out and take. It may take time, and effort, and some very carefully-planned exploits by folks like me, but we can control anything they build, within reason."

Cesar had no response. She relished leading him own, watching as he scrutinized the outdated map for answers.

"And this is because the Combine never really built anything. They just dropped it off here, light, cheap, already working, probably put together somewhere in another universe from shoddy pre-fabricated parts. And they bolted it onto our railways and power and pipelines and all the infrastructure that they didn't destroy the first time around, and it works flawlessly, on the cheap."

"I can see that," Cesar grunted.

"But the thing is, this infinitely more advanced civilization dropped off all their hardware on this miserable backwater without securing it in the slightest." Her voice rose, shrill with triumph. "They think they rule over drooling hairless apes! We couldn't stand up to them for more than seven hours, how could we comprehend their technology, much less better it? But we _have at that._ Sure, it took Vance's people five long years to wrap their minds around the weirdness of it, but once they learned the language, the entirety of Combine infrastructure turns out to run on algorithms about as complex as the code inside a toaster oven. There's a reason the scientists are in charge, you know. They have the expertise, so they can make the tools and once you have the tools you can hack yourself a whole damn freight train. Doors, cameras, navigation, logs, particle barriers and all."

"Is that how you can do what you do?" he asked. "Hack anything, go anywhere?"

"Not quite. Were that the case, I would waltz into Breen's office and challenge him to a game of backgammon. Last I heard they were working on ways of taking down particle barriers and checkpoints on the spot, but I have to do things the old fashioned way. I'm not particularly gifted, technically speaking, besides what I've had occasion to pick up over the years..."

Cesar guffawed.

"And judging by your reputation, those _occasions _must add up to quite a lot."

"...but I do have the northern half of the rail network, with most of the trainyards, in my pocket." She tried so very hard not to sound boastful.

"I won't lie. It's hard to fathom."

"And that is because we have kept our hand well-concealed. Although we know it is possible to have rebels ride the rails, it has never been done. If you operated much outside the Apron, however, you would see evidence of it." She licked her index finger and began flipping through the notebook. "You know those Combine arms plants? They practically work for us. Every few weeks, we send someone with the know-how into a terminal and schedule a locomotive to 'malfunction.' It pulls up on a remote siding, not a living soul on board, then we make off with whatever the cargo is. Last month someone turned up four tons of guided rockets for their APCs. Ever since then, we've had a bunch of ex-handymen in a bunker in the mountains, sticking them into plastic tubes with laser pointers strapped to the sides. We'll be knocking their dropships out of the sky someday, with weapons a child could use. And they gave them to us."

Cesar whistled.

"You like that, don't you. But it's not all easy. I can show up at a trainstation and have my way with it, but there are always the various preserves of the city AI. Mostly security-related features that are run off a big network and policed pretty fiercely by direct links to whatever's in the citadel. I'm telling you, you never want to try and interface with an electric fence that can triangulate your position and spit scanners in your face."

"And all this," his voice registered awe, "adds up to a plan?"

"That it does. Could take an organizational miracle to pull off, though." She found the right page at long last, a series of interminable numbers. "These are the passcodes to little worms I left behind at rail junctions across the city. If we could find enough people with the know-how, and dispatch them to each one simultaneously, for a brief period we would have control over a dozen trains. Once again, coordination would be a nightmare, but it would be theoretically possible to send them all out to rally points in the outlands. The whole damn revolution could ride in on the City 17 Express, from all directions, with enough old Red Army weapons to shoot down the moon."

Cesar slapped his hand on the concrete, which said enough.

"Once we're in the city, there's not too much that can be done to stop us. Too much cover. We would enjoy enormous superiority over local CP units, and would only need a few hours to arm the citizens. Diffusion would be key, a kalashnikov on every block, every window, not a battleground or a siege but a City Made Of Guns. And then..."

She shrugged.

"Then that's it. We win or we die."

The drone of a distant helicopter merged with buzzing of insects in the rafters.

"If that's..." Cesar shifted his weight, eyes off somewhere in the distance on the other side of the concrete walls. "If that's going to be our extinction, I still sure as hell want to see it."

"Aye," she whispered. "But I don't expect it will be. I've seen a lot of things on the way to my title, and I think the war is one thing I'll never see again. It's the distant memory because this lot aren't the Combine. They're a skeleton crew, a bare-minimum occupation force that's gone halfway native. Riot control, really. I believe they don't have even one percent of the firepower they had twenty years ago. Maybe this map and these trains put us down for good, but I don't think so."

Cesar held his hands over his face, breathing slowly.

"I think we win."


	13. Chapter 13

Iskander clutched the hollow knot in his stomach and watched the fireworks. Two more green squibs lit up the pre-dawn sky, outlining the angular thicket of television antennae on the opposite rooftop. The Drinkers below had run out of self-propelled rockets some minutes before and now resorted to whipping the hand-lit explosives aloft with a sling. Iskander's incredulity grew the more it became clear that they were not Resistance signalmen. Something else moved them, now that Civil Protection had gone skittish again overnight, perhaps mourning for yesterday's dead or perhaps just a pent-up expression of bizarre exuberance.

Iskander shuffled behind a roof support, and wished the fireworks would stop erasing the shadows inside the attic. He felt like his mid-section was attacking his spinal chord, digesting its own juices and rasping out demands for food. Here he was, the second-richest free man in City 17, starving quietly in an attic while the slaves outside had fun. Tactical distribution of his food stores had kept him dining in several districts over the last few days, but could not correct his own harebrained negligence. It occurred to him that he had been relying on Ion for meals recently. With her seemingly miraculous resources, it had not seemed an imposition. Reliance on another was bad enough and unconscious reliance was worse. With bitterness on his tongue and gunpowder smoke in his nose, he reflected on how he had been coached and groomed to her purposes. Miljan too, before his abrupt and unforeseeable breakdown.

Some forty hours earlier, before Freeman's arrival, had Ioanna been prepared to assist in his migration north? Or was she fore-warned of the security crisis, and intending nothing of the sort? Certainly the reward for the power station job had been excessive, meant to underpin an ongoing relationship. Yet he could hardly believe that the Champion of Rats would go to such lengths to recruit two of her patrons to a cause already overflowing with useful martyrs.

There was a slightly-louder bang, and a tendril of hissing flame—the butt end of a firework—bounced into the room. Iskander lurched upwards with a curse, narrowly avoiding a concussion from the century-old timbers of the ceiling. Enough of this. He had his stun baton; he could obtain food. Whether he should pawn it or rob someone with it was another question. The latter seemed a better choice, for he had suspended all dealings with citizens as one of his latter-day life-preserving measures.

He set off by the fire escape and walked south as dawn hauled itself up over the ledge and the APCs arrived to put a stop to the amateur pyrotechnics. Twenty minutes, it had taken them. The nominal curfew came with an early start to the day, and the citadel blared out something more profane and metallic than usual. Even the pigeons, usually so tolerant and jaded, didn't like it, and took off in a huff. He had in mind to visit the church orphanage two blocks down, a residence hall too dismal and impoverished even for a CP shakedown. And that ten-kilometer-high alarm clock had woken them up for him, now followed by another unscheduled Breencast, heard dimly beyond the tenements.

The voice of the city got louder with his approach, and as he hopped from one balcony to its mate across the way, he could heard the same message playing on more distant screens. The words came to him already obsolete, a few moments in the past. He never caught the meaning of a full phrase until he slid down a gable of mossy red tile and through a missing window into the east wing of the orphanage. Breen's head dissolved into a sea of pixelated neon fog as Iskander hit the floor, and the broadcast ended. An impossibly wrinkled Egyptian with dark, inquisitive excavations instead of eyes sat between him and the dying display screen.

"Hello there?" the ancient croaked.

"Good morning, babua. Up already?"

"I don't go to sleep on Sundays," came the answer, as if there had been a Sunday in twenty years. "Who are you?"

"I've come to visit Kolya," Iskander fabricated. "What did Breen have to say?"

The withered invalid dropped the blanket from his shoulders and piled it on his outstretched leg. The overturned washtub beneath him squeaked like a rodent.

"He speaks so slowly. I get lost... Between the metaphors, I guess."

"Well rest assured you're not missing much on the visual side of things." Iskander stood, listening for signs of life down the littered hallway. Someone had to have leftover rations.

"But you know it was funny..." The old Arab went on as if there had been no interruption. "This pronouncement of his, it had a feeling to it. Like it was cobbled together from old parts, and in the later parts the pitch of his voice was different, and the hissing and the echoes in the back of it."

"Mmn-hmmn." Iskander stuck his head out the door.

"He's not as practiced as he once was. Poor elocution today. It all goes bad so fast."

A yellow-haired woman with hawk's eyes glanced at him from the hall, and he drew back.

"Nooothing ever comes to—"

A fierce _blat_ of truncated static erupted from the Breenscreen, causing Iskander's blind companion to kick the blanket from his legs with surprising alacrity.

Iskander stepped up to the window, almost tripping on the discarded coverlet. The sun was up now, ending the awkward period of intermediate lighting where the scanners were nearly blind. He had not seen one in hours, however, and it appeared that they had been pulled off the beat for this entire district.

The propaganda screen was still chirping every few seconds, and the old fossil on his right held perfectly still, seemingly enraptured, his jaw at an angle to the source of the noise. Then Dr. Breen's face twinkled back into view, and the first seconds were just a silent feed with the administrator's lips moving.

"What is he—"

"…let us consider the fact that for the first time, _ever,_ as a species, immortality is in our reach."

"I know this one," the Egyptian said to him. "One of his best."

The video skipped slightly, and Breen's head reappeared several centimeters higher on the display.

"In order to be true to our nature, and our destiny, we must aspire to greater things. We have outgrown our cradle. It is futile to cry for mother's milk, when our true sustenance awaits us among the stars."

"Haven't heard that line for a year," the critic at Iskander's side remarked.

And the screen showed him the stars. He recognized Orion's Belt through the speckled green haze of a night vision camera, making the light of each star pop into oversized orbs that blocked out the sky in places.

"It's still on," the blind Drinker exclaimed. "I can hear it buzzing!"

"Nothing to see yet," Iskander murmured.

The view panned downwards and a horizon appeared, the sea. Brighter lights shone beneath that, partially washing out a sprawling expanse of blocky buildings. There were towers and a looming Combine rail depot at the center of it all. The complex climbed to the top of the screen, and Iskander realized that he was looking through the lens of a security camera. It was at the bottom of its sweep now, and with a catch in his breath he recognized the Cyrillic characters on a breached concrete wall.

"Nova Prospekt."

"Now why would you say tha—"

He ran out of the room, sticking his head into various apartments to see if they had a better view. By the time he arrived in a mildew-choked kitchen, Breen's voice had started up again, and the screen was showing other things. While the scientist in the citadel spoke of genetic imperatives and the future of humanity in truncated sound bites, the display moved on to footage within the prison, and the horrors there. Iskander could never afterwards recall the exact sequence and variety of scenes, for he began to pay more attention to the growing commotion within the building.

Some things stuck, though. People entombed or disgorged from metal pods, sedated by the paraphernalia of inky wombs on screeching rails. Stalkers at various stages of production, and careful stacks of obsolete limbs, sterilized and categorized while their synthetic replacements rode the conveyor belts of a hellish assembly line. Limp, pale cadavers, their hollowed-out flesh gleaming on operating tables, the primordial clay of Combine creation. Shots of humans rendered into obscene modernist sculpture intermingled with images of vortigaunts dissected or broken down into fluids and storms of quivering energy. Breen's voice fell away in time, and for a period of half a minute the camera lingered on a meter-wide cell, containing nothing but an Overwatch soldier without his helmet. The dead eyes bored through the walls as the seconds ticked by, and the steel gorget built into its throat gave a whir and click at exact intervals, perfectly timing inhale and exhale with a terse blink, hiding the dilated pupils from view momentarily.

There were others inside the kitchen with him know. Iskander's stomach rumbled but he failed to notice.

The stars returned to the screen, and the long up-down sweep began again. Something was different, however. The lights in the prison were dimmer in places, and a pair of searchlights burned like sunbeams, aimed into a yard somewhere nearer the shore.

A yet brighter light blossomed on the horizon, and as it dimmed, Iskander recognized it as a puff of bright smoke mushrooming over the rooftops. Yes, one corner of the prison rippled with tiny flashes and a pair of gunships cavorted overhead like flies around a picnic, firing down into the complex. In the final moments of the silent feed, a trail of glowing vapor rose from the ground and a rocket slammed into one of the insect wing rotors. The apartment let out a collective gasp as the fiery starburst lit up the screen.

Back into the bowels of Nova Prospekt, through the lenses of cameras with full color and sound now too. The tile corridors rattled and hammered with frantic gunfire. Chatter on the intercom from emotionless Overwatch closely resembled panic, and there were bodies lying near the rim of a gaping crater in the floor. The corpses lay swaddled in their armor, midnight blue and impossibly thick, with the lights gone out behind their helmets.

And finally a view through a third kind of camera, grainy and handheld. They looked up at the prison through a forest of reeds and skeletal logs. With a strange jump in his chest Iskander heard the steady breathing and human voices in the view screen, louder than the explosions and gunfire beyond. Cell blocks were on fire, serving as floodlights for the rest of the scene, and the infernos danced and whirled as the cameraman's hands shook.

The people on video called out in alarm as a flight of dropships pulled away from the prison. The lights in the windows dimmed suddenly, and the Drinkers all around grew quiet. There was a noise somewhat like a tea kettle, albeit one the size of a nuclear plant, and Nova Prospekt exploded. A stream of roiling phosphorus flame leapt into the air, consolidating and floating away overhead like an incendiary soap bubble. Before the brightness overwhelmed the camera, Iskander saw guard towers melting. The ground rushed upwards, and the footage became impossible to follow as the cameraman ran headlong, screaming in terror and exultation. The last sound was a great tearing, like distorted thunder, and the recording ended.

Iskander realized that he had been pressing his face against the glass, and that the grimy surface was fogged with his breath. There was a quiet sort of vibration in his throat. The insides of his elbows twitched.

Only the yellow lambda remained on the screen now, accompanied by a word in a dozen languages.

Resist.

Drinkers were milling about the kitchen in a state of hyperactive bewilderment. He remained silent, the better to keep the roaring in his ears under control, and looked into their faces like a wondering child. He sought out their eyes and saw behind them, after longs years of averted gaze.

Then the music started. Horns first, then a swelling onrush of a hundred nameless instruments. It was music such as had not been heard for a generation, dazzling the ears and pulling Iskander's untrained mind in three directions at once. Each sound rode on a shifting current of other tones, themselves mysterious composites.

A man of about forty broke out in tears instantaneously, and older voices around the roof exclaimed unfamiliar names. Iskander left them to their reunion, pocketing an unattended ration carton on the way out.

The music continued as he made his way back north. Civil Protection shut down the display screens, but the symphony went on, bursting from separate speaker networks. The fanfare was louder with every passing minute, and soon there were fireworks being set off again, invisible in the morning sky but clearly heard over it all, the echoes of defiance.


	14. Chapter 14

Miljan shook his hand in front of his eyes, a faint smile on his lips. Stretching out across three sacks of rice, he listened to the beating of his heart and enjoyed the feeling of the vodka slowly wearing off. What was ordinarily a sickening, recriminatory feeling was now a source of stimulation for his curious mind, a self-conscious analysis of his own responses to drunkenness. It was good vodka, saved for very last, but that did not bother him yet. In any case, Grandmother disapproved of his habit and tended to leave when he imbibed. She had vacated her corner some time hence, making no allowances even for the occasion of his alcoholic swan song, and would likely not be back for some hours to come. Hopefully it would not be too long. He needed some more stories of the old world to divert him from wondering what the future held, now that there was only water.

And there was less and less of that. As if someone had pulled a plug, the flooded lower levels had begun to drain, a day or so before. A number of things must have shifted, for water had resumed coming in through the wall at a lesser rate. He had long ceased to notice the thunderous, churning noise that again filled his home, happy to live with one less sense. Vision was going along with hearing, as he preserved his batteries by lighting the shelter only every third hour. The result was that he noticed the occasional tremors more readily, and Grandmother appeared clearest when the room was darkest, standing out against the inky concrete like a white candle.

Every time he floated the possibility of opening the peep hole to verify his clock, she would become hostile and sullen. With an aggrieved voice she would relay her thoughts on the clinic's inability to make good on her aching joints. Then there were church roofs, rabid foxes, dry thickets and the trouble they caused in the fall and warm lamp-lit tables surrounded by young men with close-cropped hair, wasting their goddamn lives with dice and loud guffawing and sinful cassette tapes from Austria.

By now, he knew better than to bring any of it up. It was just too hard to have the room filled up with the ashy corpses that came following the sound her voice. The charred bones of his antebellum universe clacked together along with her knitting needles, piling higher and higher and closing over his head. The layer of detritus swelled each time she spoke, leaving him down here with no light from the sun. He knew that the buildings of the city still poked out of the mass slightly, desiccated and hollowed out and being slowly interred, leaving him deeper in the ground and closer to Earth's dead center.

And yet, what would he do without her? He rolled onto his right side, reaching for the lamp. This worked on occasion.

Miljan flipped the switch and the gas flame died away.

"So there you are, Miljichka. Are you done drinking? Young suckling pig."

"It's run out, Grandmother." The shimmer of her form became harder to pick out as his eyes adjusted to the dark. In the end, she was just a shape; he could not decided if she was darker or lighter than the background. He left pauses between his words, waiting for her fidget in irritation at the silence and become visible for a moment. "Does that please you?"

"Hmmn..." It always impressed him how her thin voice could carry over the din of the rushing water. "Perhaps you were better off with the bottle. It kept you from asking about the old times, and all those unhealthy thoughts."

She sounded testy today. He got to his feet and walked towards the west (or was it east?) wall, pacing in the usual twenty meter triangle.

"Miljan, listen to me. It will get harder, you know. Your filthy vodka is the first to run out, but soon other things will become short too. But you must _never_ forget my words. You cannot go back above to the dead world. I won't let you throw your life away."

"But Gran," he favored her with an indulgent smile. "Won't I need to get food sometime?"

"You are too clever for that. Moj drag, you lived for years and years in a pit of embers on nothing, nothing at all. Here were you have everything, and you can live forever."

All at once the water stopped flowing. Miljan stopped to listen, facing the wall with his ears pricked. There was still the dull roar three stories down, but the flow from the collapsed wall had halted. He felt a rustle in his feet. Or rather, in the floor. The shelter quivered like a draft moving through the fine hairs on a cat, a movement too subtle to notice except with the senses of a blind man.

And then a jolt, a sharp movement upwards and eastwards and back again. It was like nothing ever—

"Grandmother!"

"Hush, Miljan. Ignore it and come over to me."

His ears suddenly rang with a clear tone from above, a brassy note held for several seconds, like bells from heaven. Then a tremendous grinding and cracking, and it was difficult to stand.

"MILJAN!"

The ceiling balled itself into a fist and screamed towards the floor and light, light, _light!_ A tide of fiery incandescent dust lashed at his eyeballs. He felt them being skinned, crying tears of blood in impossible glaring whiteness, ears equally overloaded by a sound greater than all of Knin rolling on top of him in a wave.

The sun! He lay—and he was lying now—for several seconds too dazzled by it to notice the pain in his shins. Blinking and blinking until the sting in his eyes faded and he had the sense to crane his neck away from the punishing glow. The taste of masonry filled his mouth, he was breathing the grit in from his nostrils and grinding it on his tongue.

More blinking, and the picture emerged. His lower legs were buried in a pile of concrete gravel . Rebars stuck out of the rubble at crazed angles, protruding into the lazy cyclone of sunlit dust that rotated in the breeze. Every now and then a gust of wind dipped down from the blinding expanse of the sky and set everything swirling in the other direction. It was beautiful.

Things looked different when he stood up. As the punishing glare of the sky faded to familiar blue, he took stock. The roof had collapsed along with everything above him, punched into the ground by a gleaming oblong shape. Miljan looked up through a long tunnel of vaporized cement. There was the sun of course, and some sky now behind it, but also teeth-like rows of blue-black metal. Slowly, he identified the colossus that had cracked open his hideout as the toe of a Combine perimeter wall. Several meters of it extended into the shelter, poised just above the floor and a pile of debris.

Debris. A mound of masonry shards stood uncannily close to—

"Oykhrist!"

A trickle of liquid dug a tiny valley in the dust-covered floor, the only evidence of his smashed and buried water supply. It lay underneath a metric ton of debris along with all his riches. For the first time he noticed that much of fragments kicked up by the impact were in fact rice grains. Only the barest corner of one of the sacks could be seen. Miljan fell to his knees, and a short pulse of vomit splattered on the hard ground. He stayed there for a moment, huddled with his face a few centimeters from the soiled floor.

The grinding sound began again as another section of wall began to relocate farther off. This time he heard it all from start to finish, the screaming metal, clanking joints and then the avalanche of brick and mortar as an entire building came down. And other sounds, too, farther in the distance. There were echoes and murmurs that he did not dare to identify.

The last of the vodka had left him now; he was painfully clear-headed. He felt a sickening twinge in his gut whenever he looked at his buried possessions. Life could not even carry on here. Of all places, it had fallen here as well, and there was no better option. He had to leave. The blast doors had buckled from the pressure on the frame, exposing cracks in the steel but sealing them forever shut. With a sudden burst of movement, Miljan made a lunge for the ceiling and seized a twisted rebar. The steel grooves bit into his hand, but he only clenched his jaw and writhed his way upwards with a desperate, simian strength. The top of the shelter's radiation shielding offered a narrow ledge to stand on, a starting point for the angled cascade of shattered bricks and bent girders leading to the surface. He picked his way up more carefully now, moving from foothold to ginger handhold like a tree sloth. Every time the mass of rubble shifted beneath his weight, his heart pulsed heavily. It fought for escape from his chest until it became clear that the sides were not about to mobilize and carry him back underground forever. That would be a much easier outcome, all told, and while his instincts screamed in alarm, his mind watched the cinderblocks impassively, waiting with patience to see where they would take him.

As the lip of the crater approached, he could no longer ignore the world above. The entire city reverberated with the hollow knocking of distant machinegun fire, short rattling spurts and occasional drawn-out panicked fusillades. War sounded like woodpeckers, busily picking away at the city from the east where helicopters hammered at the canals. Headcrab canisters sparkled in the sun on their way north, and the sight of them being fired inside the city limits made him stop climbing to gawk. A strider's baleful call saw him going again, and not so cautiously this time.

With an exhausted grunt, Miljan slithered over the edge of the pit, onto a relatively comfortable surface of crushed drywall and plaster. Sliding on his belly every now and then, a few centimeters at a time, he took in his surroundings through dull eyes. The cluster of administrative buildings was unrecognizable now that the walking walls had shorn off their facades. Several dozen meters of pulverized rubble marked the path of the blade-like panels. The section of wall immediately overhead was tilted at a precarious angle, evidently since one foot had plunged into the fallout shelter. Some of joints between foundation blocks were wrenched and broken-looking.

Gutteral radio chatter sounded in the street, and a trio of CPs stalked into the cul-de-sac formed by the walls and the ruined buildings. The lead officer carried a compact submachine gun; the others had sidearms and stun sticks. They looked to be scanning the field of debris at ground level, alert but not particularly concerned. Miljan pushed off with his feet and resumed the slide down to a patch of exposed sidewalk. In a shadowed corner formed by a sheet of Combine metal and a still-standing brick chimney, he sat and hugged his knees to himself, waiting.

"Overwatch, Protection Team. Report charge hectare clean, re-alignment protocols compromised... possibly. Overwatch, stand by."

A gunship thundered overhead and the Protection Team strolled back into view. It was impossible to tell whether they were looking into his hiding place or right past it.

"Citizen, remain calm."

Miljan sighed, feeling the barrels trained on him, and buried his head between his legs. Through the narrow gap beneath his arms he could make out the black boots as they came to rest before him. The leader took Miljan's hand in his, examining it. The dark leather was smooth and warm.

"Citizen is unarmed."

The CP held his automatic in his left hand, by his side just out of the reach. His subordinate held a pistol on Miljan from a short ways back. It was contract, he knew, a mutual understanding that he would not make the exercise of power necessary.

A handheld optical scanner appeared, and the gloved hand wrenched his head upright. Miljan kept his eyes shut, listening intently for the death that would follow his identification.

"Open up, prodigal."

The instrument jabbed at his face and he recoiled, accidentally jamming the CP's fingers with his nose. It smarted, worse than a blow, and his eyes flipped open, instantly filled with tears.

"I'm sorry, Gran."

The CP started, his guard behind took aim in alarm and Miljan felt the world rushing away into the ground. If this was the bad joke the universe wanted to play on him, then so be it. Let them just do it.

He roared.

"_NaJEBO_—" and lunged for the gun. In one bare instant Miljan clutched at empty air as his captor easily sidestepped into the path of a pistol bullet and staggered, clutching desperately at his shoulder blade with a hand still holding the automatic.

"Kurvaaaggh—" He caught his enemy up in a bear hug, squeezing the blood out of him in rhythmic spurts. The second CP waved his sidearm in the air uselessly; the third seemed to have no ammunition. He reached up, seized the filter of the dead-eyed gas mask and twisted, simultaneously receiving a crushing blow on the shoulder from the submachine gun, knocking the magazine free. Nylon crackled and raptured and Miljan flung his adversary to the ground face-first. Up swinging with his other arm, the gun somehow in his hands, one bullet in the chamber to find the guts of the second gunman. And now the third, advancing with his stun stick. Miljan swung the empty gun on its shoulder strap like a bolas. It collided with the electrified baton and discharged it, a weak current prickling at his arms through the fabric in his hands. On the second pass, he connected with the CP's helmet and tackled him. The electric charge washed over them both, shrieking and sizzling until his hands found the baton's handle and jammed the head into his victim's metal-rimmed eye socket.

One, two seconds to come down from the shivering, paralyzing electricity. Heart fluttering and by _fuck_ his shoulder hurt. Both other CPs squirming on the ground, deal with the zapped one later. One on the right still had a gun. He half ran, half crawled into battle and tried to step on the pistol. The officer flailed at him, sending one shot ringing against the steel barrier looming overhead and flinging the weapon into a maze of rubble."

"My GUN! _Idi_—_u_—_pićku_—_materinu_—" One stamp of his foot with every syllable. He realized that the bastard's rib cage was not the best spot for his efforts, but the quisling had seemed to stop breathing for a moment regardless. Miljan pounded over to the bleeding form of the lead CP, scooped up his faintly-resisting body and dropped it onto a pile of jagged concrete fragments.

Standing with his back tied into a knot, pain still beating a drum in his shoulder, he realized that the flashes all around him weren't leftover electricity playing with his eyes. A scanner hovered behind him, undulating in altitude and snapping pictures frantically. He bounced a brick off its front panels and let out a hoarse, barking scream that flowed into a vicious laugh.

"Don't you watch me yet, you little fucker, you! Come back in a minute, because I'm not finished while these wretches yet live!"

More Combine machines flew overhead, sweeping the ruined block with vortexes of dust. He made an enraged throwing motion at them as they disappeared behind the forest of black spires.

"Can't you idiots manage anything?" he screamed. "You—you bring me out here, crack me open, take me up, and you can't even do it? Finish it! It's what you're here for!"

Gunfire rippled along the avenue nearby, and a chorus of bullets crackled in the air ten meters up.

"I don't think you will. I don't think you can. I don't think you've got the guts."

The scanner was sliding away now, towards the sounds of the fighting. He tasted blood in his mouth, a lot of it. The iron scent filled hi nostrils.

"You don't _deserve_ to kill me, you pathetic mewling puissant worms! That I should reduce you to this, alone and unarmed! Asking for death I was and look at you now!"

The second CP started to roll over. Miljan tipped him onto his back and jumped, planting both feet on the unprotected neck as he landed. Two to go.

"You will _rue _the day you slithered from your mothers' syphilitic wombs! I will hound you until you find the balls to do it or I will end you all, I swear to God I am the scourge of the world you killed!"

The pain in his shoulder was fading, and he saw the submachine gun's magazine lying behind a shattered light fixture. Human voices sounded in the street.

"Karo, over here!"

Three more armed men appeared in the ruins, two young-looking citizens and a familiar dark-skinned man decked out in a Civil Protection flak vest and lambda insignia. They saw Miljan and stopped, taking in the scene.

He retrieved the fallen magazine, chambered it and slung his newfound possession on his shoulder. Striding forward, he turned his face to the sky, drinking in the sounds of war that came to him from all directions, the heartbeat of a city reborn in blood. Reaching the first of the rebels, he flung wide his arms and embraced him.

"Well done, brother, well done."


	15. Chapter 15

The thin lilting of the acoustic guitar went on. Iskander gathered his legs beneath himself, the better to stay a few centimeters above the sticky floor, and looked at the instrument askance. A few electronic interjections still butted into the music, like strange percussion, but all the noisier consoles, cameras and view screens had been smashed and silenced. The revolution had swept through some hours before, in a frenzy of giddy righteousness, leaving the Civil Protection headquarters of Precinct 8 an empty echoing wreck. No masked collaborators had been present to defend the former broadcasting company, so the fighters had produced one. They had hauled him up to the canopied lookout post built into the third floor and nailed him there, hanging by his wrists.

Iskander had been there first, squatting nervously amidst the unfamiliar, abandoned machinery while the lambda took possession. And here he still was, sitting against the wall and listening to the music of a talkative rebel with a childlike smile and a bloody splint on his leg.

"Guitar?" Iskander asked.

"Lord, no. Gui-_tar._ You don't say it like you did unless you're from... well, nevermind." His companion screwed up his face, staring into the depths of an interrogation cell in order to navigate a particularly difficult chord. The unlikely insurgent was perhaps a little over-friendly, and also a medic. Earlier, before the morphine had worn off, he had periodically forgotten his own injury to provide greetings and joke-riddled care to lightly wounded fighters that found their way in. The precinct had fallen early and remained far from the fighting, meaning that they had seen few casualties. A good thing, considering the unequipped, unofficial nature of the field hospital, established only by virtue of one doctor's enforced presence. Out towards Ioanna's theater, where Overwatch pulse rifles had been shivering the air since dawn, the triage sites were probably overflowing.

"And the music the morning before last?"

"What, on the screens? Tchaikovsky. A nice touch, that."

"Tchaikovsky." Now that was a word Iskander could say.

There was a steely thump from down the street outside, repeated every four or five seconds in a ragged pattern.

"There go the mortars again," the rebel said. Bernier, his name was? Burnett? "Here's hoping they don't catch any counter-battery fire this time. Those headhopper pods don't seem to miss." He set down the guitar. "But it's just like the commissars said. Headcrab cannisters are almost all the citadel has thrown at us; they don't have anything worse. Just what flies on wings or goes on legs."

"Oh good, then they'll only kill us twice over."

"You're a funny one Alexander. You'll see who has the real firepower in this city soon enough. They weren't ready for this. Couldn't have been." Bernier winced as he shifted his leg over, the better to lean in towards Iskander, voice lowered. "The Freeman came back and he stayed with us for three days, did you know that? And now he's gone back to wherever he was before, but he showed us the way. At Nova Prospekt, he showed us and he showed them and he took the whole damn building with him." He cackled and waved his hands at the ceiling. "And then, _bang_! Tchaikovsky on the radio! You all must have pissed yourselves. And Breen most of all."

Headcrabs now wandered the streets like stray cats, and the piece of highway guardrail laid across the entrance to keep them out suddenly rattled.

"Here's more company," Bernier said, reaching for his medical pack.

Two fighters emerged from the lobby, supporting a woman between them. Her black skin had turned unnaturally pallid, and her red beret fell to the floor as the trio came to a halt. Iskander saw the gouges on her shoulders, the compound fracture in her arm, and shuddered.

"Well, balls! Where did you three come from."

"Like I know," one of the newcomers croaked. "When's the last time you saw a legible street sign in this town?"

"I can't do much for your lady friend here," Bernier was talking with his hands again. "All I've got is gauze and sutures, and me not being able to barely walk. Why are people even still coming here? Tell them to stop!" His voice had become shrill, and Iskander shot a look at the offending leg.

The rejected patient let out a soft groan, looking marginally conscious. Her bearers fidgeted in consternation.

"The man on the airwaves said this was the closest aid station..."

"Well it isn't anymore. Try the train station, what's it called—"

"Fugee Freight," Iskander offered. Everyone looked his way, including the wounded woman, and he tried to resume looking shell shocked and useless. On of the fighters jerked his free thumb at him.

"Who's he? That's not Drinker garb; did he come in with us?"

"No sir, I'm an illegal alien." Iskander snickered to himself, then shivered as a strider blew an apartment building inside out, several miles distant.

"Don't bother trying to roust him," Bernier said. "How are things going out there?"

"Pretty much the way they sound," came the grunted reply.

"Is it still true what they told us in the trains? Mostly ground forces, no artillery or super weapons?"

"They told you that on the trains? Huh, I guess that's so." The insurgent scratched beneath his body armor. "But then again it seems to be less true every minute. It turns out the CPs can play at the scavenging game too, because I think they found some howitzers. Either that, or our own artillery is a terrible shot. And they've weaponized the scanners, dropping incendiaries and whole sticks of dynamites sometimes. There are hopper mines showing up that'll leap at a vehicle from fifty yards and take out a whole building, and they look damnedly like the normal ones. Then there's this I hear of _satellites_ killing people over by the armament plants. So yeah, it's the same cuddly old war machine except when it finds new tricks."

Iskander made himself slightly smaller, seeking to meld with the wallpaper.

"But we got most of the weapons out among the populace, so we increased our manpower tenfold and hopefully we can take the hits. A lot of cannon fodder, but I'll be damned if some of them aren't pretty fucking enthusiastic."

Forgotten for a moment, the injured rebel let out an exasperated snarl.

"Alright, sweetheart, we can go see the real doctor now. Say, where is the damn place, anyways?"

"Right east of here. Just follow the blue signs that say 'BNTOWA.'"

Iskander groaned a little. He acted on a standing offer and took a handful of raw oats from Bernier's bag. The other rebels left, mercifully without attempting to conscript him.

"Sonofa bitch, Alex. My leg's feeling worse before it gets any better. Almost lost my cool."

Iskander gestured at a pre-war electronics station in the middle of the room.

"Couldn't we get on the radio and tell your comrades to stop directing people here for treatment?"

"That would be nice, but I don't think that setup can reach the wavelength command uses. I know the CP setup monitors everything, but I can't credential into their business. Can you?"

"I never came within a hundred meters of a place like this before."

"Didn't think so." Bernier peered into his torn pant leg. "But you know what, that Ion you cityfolk are so in awe of would know. She could still be at the station where the real hospital is, running the rails and such."

Iskander sat up straight.

"Of course, what would be the point of her coming here for a little thing like that?"

"Hold on, Bernier. You're sure it's Ioan—Ion?"

"Well I heard it from some decently trustworthy people."

"And she's at Fugee Freight. Right now?"

"Fuji-where? When I last heard eight hours ago, yes."

"Tell you what, then." Iskander rose, popping another few oats in his mouth. "Why don't I run down to the station and find her so she can get the wounded to the right place. And I'll see if I can't get someone back here with a stretcher for you."

"That works," Bernier said, looking indifferent to the latter idea.

"I'll be going, then." He nodded to the injured rebel.

"Take it easy, pal."

Iskander nodded his head and made for the front door. A salvo of some indeterminate artillery impacted on a row of houses to the west, lowering the city's skyline by several floors. He shrank back inside the doorway momentarily, trying to wrap his mind around the enormity of the fact that hiding from the scanners on the horizon no longer mattered. The citadel in daylight told him that he had come much farther west than he had intended. Navigation, however, had been incompatible with his panicked dashes across embattled streets at midnight. Fugee Freight was vaguely east of here, and as Bernier had pointed out, the blue signs for Vitosha Station showed the way.

He crossed into the shadows of the checkpoint opposite and passed through the empty metal frame where a particle field had been. It took a few more minutes to sink in that he could simply _walk_ in the _streets_ the whole way there. There was a definite lull in the fighting now, and the heavier gunfire was so distant as to sound like a dull, wooden knocking, less alarming than fireworks. Before Iskander began to actually whistle the tune to one of Bernier's songs, the croaking whine of a headcrab sounded behind him.

He turned, and there they all were. Three round little parasites, lined up in the gutter like schoolchildren waiting their turn. They marched along in their usual unhurried way, their undersized forelegs waving awkwardly in the air, sniffing him out. It look borderline comical, but he was being hunted nonetheless. Several more appeared from sidestreets and alleyways, some even taking the trouble to make their five-meter leaps on their ways towards him.

"You guys get hungry all of a sudden?" Iskander lengthened his stride. It had been a year since he had seen more than two headcrabs in one place, and in the city they rarely acted with such aggression in direct light. Predation was evidently no longer an afterthought. So nice of Breen to send them his pets by air mail. As the headcrabs' soft cries shifted in tone to something more chilling, Iskander felt himself falling inside a tightening net.

"I eat you, you don't eat me!" He took off running, although it made the lightness in his head grow a little bit. The pavement hit hard at his feet, pulsing up through his thighs. His muscles felt slack. Had he really become accustomed to a soft living and luxurious diet so soon?

A salvo of black canisters landed the next street over, shivering the sidewalk and flipping severed TV antennae into the air. You had to be close to hear the impact charges going off, spraying steel shavings around at knee height to slow down the parasites' prey.

More on the way, and hearing the noise they made before they hit was always the worst part. At least bullets killed silently. A slightly higher pitch this time, that meant—

The facade exploded above his head, ejecting most of the second floor into the street. Iskander dove out from beneath a plunging mass of debris, only to have it catch in the wind and pour onto his shoulders, whipping and slicing. A shattered file cabinet bounced twice onto the crosswalk, and he saw belatedly that he had been covered in a dense shower of paper, not plaster and brick. There was his reflection in a bullet-ridden Breenscreen across the avenue, looking bewildered and foolish—and also about to be set upon by headcrabs. Running again, mindful that the parasites would emerge from the canisters hyperactive from the gas and twice as fast.

Why was he even out here, scurrying home to Ion as if she would have anything helpful to say to him? Claiming neutrality wasn't going to be any easier now. Really, the idea had taken a turn towards the idiotic. Shit, Miljan, what a time to quit.

The street war roared back to life all at once, rhythmic thunder to the south. No, it was all just down the road; he had run into an intersection without checking—

Overwatch. Oh fuck, oh fuck. Shooting at him? Pulse rifle fire cut a stoplight in half, the spear-shaped beams of fire shrieking and screeching on their way past. Behind the car? Out of sight? Or were they—yes, he was behind the trailer, in cover.

For a moment, nothing but squawking radios in the distance. He sat hunched in the shadow of an overturned truck, panicky legs pressing his back into the cast iron of the tow rig. Frayed strands of cable pricked his spine with every enormous breath he took. Idiot, idiot, what does everyone know about Combine guns? They go through—

A half-meter diameter of flatbed vaporized before his eyes, leaving a round hole hissing with inky molten slag. The pulse orb zoomed off down the street to ricochet on a balcony and evaporate a length of storefront. Hot gas washed over him, cloaked in a powerful stench of ozone and something indescribable. They began shooting again, showering the truck with glowing needles that punched smooth-edged holes in the iron, nine and ten centimeters through and through. By some psychological accident, the smell had broken through his panic and set him moving again.

The moment it took him to run from the truck to the alleyway was free of all thoughts, even fear, though the air was full of bright zipping death. Slipping between the buildings was like falling into a warm bath. Suddenly there were several tons of masonry between himself and the guns, and he could feel their weight cool the air in his lungs and calm his heart. The corner behind him became a geyser of dust rather noisily, perforated like it was made of styrofoam.

Let those pricks try and waddle after him now! Who had come up with the idea of strapping black mattresses to every soldier's chest, anyway? Iskander ducked around a dumpster and collided with something heavy and soft.

"The _fuck?_"

A pistol went off somewhere near his head as he his feet skittered in the trash.

"What are you shooting?"

He established that he had bounced off a rebel's vested torso, tripped, and dug his ribs into something jagged on the way down. There were gunmen all around him now.

"Great fucking job!"

"Ugrešić! Go check the street and make sure they're not coming down on us. Now who's the klutz there?"

Iskander groaned and clutched at the metal bauble that was poking at his side.

"He's got a grenade!"

With horror, he saw that they were right. He had somehow detached a grenade on the way down, and now held it by the pin.

"Someone grab that thing. Looks like he's about to faint."

Hands in fingerless gloves came down from above and retrieved it from his shaky grasp. He scrambled upright, to meet the hostile eyes of an insurgent squad leader.

"Ehm, hello." This fellow looked like a Viking in Red Army fatigues.

"In a hurry, citizen?"

"Considering the whole mess of Overwatch on the street out there, yes. And I'll be going; don't want your grenades anyhow."

The blond-haired sergeant held out his hand. Iskander was suddenly conscious of the multitude of Kalashnikovs all around him.

"Now hold it there one—" Concrete started disintegrating at the far end of the alley, and he could _feel_ the echoes on his cheek as they rippled back down towards him. He became instantly beneath the rebels' notice, and stepped through an inviting doorway.

The pounding went on as he jogged down a cobwebbed hallway and through the hole where a headcrab cannister had taken out the lift. For several seconds, he moved alone through the dark interior. Then boots sounded in the building behind as Iskander stepped out into a garden-turned-thicket. It sounded exactly like Civil Protection, and he dropped to his knees in the brambles as the rebels came tearing back down the way they had come.

"Koba, you moron! Drop the sack and hoof it!"

Fighters swept past on either side of him, making the vines thrash. This time they paid him no mind. He took off with them, shaken loose by an explosion that was short and sharp, with a bit of rasp shuddering underneath. It sounded like like a product of earth, rather than the greater universe.

Could he identify bombs now?

The fighters running nearest him were laughing as their rifle barrels slapped at their thighs. Every time he slackened his pace, a muzzle brake poked him in the rear, so Iskander let the cluster of gunmen sweep him on out of the courtyard.

"Check street," roared the Norseman from behind, but Iskander and the lead fighters were already running into the open, and they halted before a guardrail and the sudden drop of a stone terrace.

All at once, the city spread out before him, a smoke-smudged panorama reflecting red and yellow in a small window of sunlight. There was the mountain to the north, barely distinguishable from the low-lying clouds that crouched there like spectators of the war. And Fugee Freight directly before him, framed by the tower blocks on the far side. The view was familiar, Iskander having been here twice before, but they city was not. The streets had changed overnight. From this vantage point alone he could make out half a dozen intersections that no longer existed. They had sprouted clusters of walking walls like black steel headdresses, a sign of emergency lock-down. Over the choked city, gunships lazed about, following gently curving courses while the neighborhoods in their shadow flickered and smouldered. They seemed to barely be moving, least of all near the citadel—once again on alert—where they orbited the mid-section like dust motes on a still day.

"You pukes aren't going to last too long out here, are you? Well go on, then! Get down that ladder and we'll see if you can find an even higher hill for you to stand on like a pack of idiots who want to be shot by three synths at once!"

Iskander glimpsed a strider swaggering past his convent hideout on the ridge opposite, maybe half a kilometer away. He was about to point it out when someone shoved him from behind, and he staggered against the guardrail.

"Go, go!"

One leg up and over, and he found himself climbing down not a ladder but a garden trellis. For a moment he looked into a dark cavity in the stone and felt himself back in the elevator shaft with the refugees and the manhacks. As he had that gory afternoon, he dropped off the ladder from halfway up. One of the Resistance fighters swore at him for stumbling into their midst. They extricated themselves and crouched in the shadowy space behind the row of houses at the bottom.

"That's the way. Everyone over the edge."

In the distance, there was a sound like a power plant starting up. The air in Iskander's mouth and nose felt heavy and charged with static. He looked up at the lip of the terrace, and the stubble on his cheeks stood erect. For a slim portion of a second that stretched out to overstay its welcome many times over, he saw a thin beam of blue light reach out and caress the house overhead. Then an enormous swelling sensation in every orifice of his body and a deeper shade of blue washed out existence. It wasn't the loudest sound he had heard that day. Rather, the strider's pulse cannon was clear and pure, a violin mixed with a slow lightning bolt. The flash did not last long either, and laying on his back he could see the block of houses on top of the terrace take flight and rush towards the source of the blast in a cyclone of grey vapor and sizzling azure plasma. Bricks and mortar flowed over the edge like water, and _that_ was loud. With something like amazement, he realized that the could stand.

Had all the rebels made it down the trellis in time? He could see three lying on the ground, all moving, whether in agony or irritation. As if as an afterthought, a second building caved in on itself, and Iskander took the chance to turn tail. Immediately, he fell down a short flight of steps. His nose was bleeding, but for sure nothing had struck him. The two spots of blood on his wrist were impossibly red, probably because every patch of exposed skin was caked with pale dust. Did the Combine consider walking snowmen to be combatants in the rebellion? Absurdly, the thought that he had left his satchel behind in the alley chose to come to him at that particular moment.

"Okay," he breathed. Almost on home turf now, just down this hill and across Sevastopol Avenue. Then Fugee Freight.

There were voices from back by the ruined terrace now, so at least some of the rebels had survived.

Was that 'manhacks' he had heard? Or was he being paranoid? Not that it mattered either way. Iskander ran.


	16. Chapter 16

Ioanna heard the footfalls in the corridor and shut down the console. Darkness reclaimed the windowless room, except for the constellation of pinprick holes in the tarp that covered the shattered skylight. Her pursuer paused in the doorway for a moment, then went on down the hall. She sighed, and quit the control room as soon as he was out of sight. This was becoming untenable.

Ducking into the claustrophobic spiral stairwell, she reflected that Fugee Freight did not really deserve its name. For starters, it was a purely passenger-oriented station, the freight cars were all derelicts—

The sandstone blocks that made up the walls rattled. Probably the Combine mobile barrier swallowing up another five meters of plaza. It was the only Combine gadget she could not crack, and the freckled Resistance technician was having only slightly more luck.

—and despite the sign reading 'Nova Prospekt,' the east platform was far from the only prison-bound line in the city. Others carried far more traffic, whether weapons or humans or something in-between. Or had, to be precise. The rebels' entrance into the city had been hurried and half-panicked, but the contingent coming from the sack (and lovely journalistic _exposée_) of Nova Prospekt had pulled off an arrival that was downright triumphant, on a weaponized razor train.

Ioanna passed the janitor closet with the dead CPs inside and turned towards the main platform. With consternation she saw that a chainlink gate had swung shut since her last trip downstairs, engaging the combo lock and blocking her path.

"For fuck's..."

She was only too happy to lay the blame a priori on that 'assistant' of hers. When the Commissar of Canals (a title chosen purely for alliterative effect) had begrudgingly endorsed her project to keep the rail network running, he had cursed her with a member of his staff as helper. Or as minder, conceivably, but if she caught him doing any minding, she would lock him in the closet with the collaborator cadavers.

"He's a co-national... you'll get along fine... Hell!"

She retraced her steps to get around the infuriatingly flimsy obstruction. Yes, it was true, he appeared to be Greek. An old generation, silent, insipid-eyed Hellenic fossil. And it set her teeth on age to be in the same room as his faded suspenders. Perhaps starting her revolution meant she had to deal with the rest of humanity now, not just its useful and interesting representatives. But if anyone deserved the blame for bringing out her inner misanthrope, it was that idiot the Commissar of Canals.

Ioanna slipped through the broken turnstile and sat on the tilted frame of the Breenscreen where it had fallen. She gazed down the track at the tunnel, her eyes by now filtering out the gunships and scanners automatically. If her watch was correct, which it certainly was not after last night's immersion, a train was due in four minutes. Of course, that arrival was also dependent on her successful navigation of the newly-scrambled Combine rail protocols, and in her agitated state of mind.

A particle field flickered to life momentarily, down by where the track curved out of sight. She hissed with displeasure. The last thing she needed was someone being cut in half because of a sloppy breech of the security system. The revolution needed some more technically-minded people, and of all things her Greek had been a chemical engineer in his former life.

A flash of movement near the tunnels caught her eye. The barrier again? If it was acting up more frequently now she would have to—

No, there it was again, between two boxcars. A figure appeared, face downcast, walking on top of a rail. She peered at the man, scarcely registering the next set of vibrations from the expanding wall in the plaza. There was something about his gait...

Ioanna chuckled, but it came out as a delighted guffaw.

"Ahoj! Tovarish!" She waved. A few more pieces of glass popped out of the Breenscreen's frame as she stood.

Iskander looked up and stepped off the rail. He passed behind a locomotive without waving back and emerged moments later on the platform.

"Just the fellow I wanted to see! Someone who speaks my language! Have you kept yourself up?"

He seemed to consider.

"Well enough. Yourself?"

"I don't know whether to gloat first or cut straight to the bitching. I see you're all wet, though, so why don't you start."

"Had to wash something off," he grunted, sagging against a pile of pallets. He gestured expansively at the pillars of smoke to the north. "But credit where credit is due, Ion. You weren't kidding about all this."

That felt good.

"You don't know the half of it, Iska." Her dogged assistant appeared at the turnstile and she shot him a murderous look to shoo him away. "I am glad to see you on your feet; it's a different city out there. What have you been doing with yourself, anyways?"

"Guitar recital," came the response. A series of rattling sounds filled the pause in the conversation, probably emanating from the machinegun nest on Sevastopol Street. "That doesn't concern you?"

She shrugged.

"It comes and goes. We've reached a sort of arrangement with Civil Protection where they don't make any serious attempts on our position. Maybe you saw the APCs in the gutter from the final round of negotiations. So long as no striders come along, I think the station is secure. It would have been abandoned, except that the power plant, where this whole mess started, is still occupied. And the big man around these parts wants the Canals overpass for communication purposes. Though no one set foot on top of it, of course."

The sound of rail crossing bells echoed from a loudspeaker on the wall, and Ioanna clacked her tongue with satisfaction.

"And here's my train. Which means the bridges are still standing on the White Forest line. Just one more to check now."

A rusting Soviet relic of a locomotive trundled into view, accompanied by the flickering of the particle field. The squealing brakes made conversation impossible, so she beckoned and made for the east hall.

"I won't lie; you look slightly less healthy than when we last met." She bit her lip. "When did you last eat?"

"Good question," Iskander responded, seeming to revive a little.

"Well, I don't think they've run out of citizen rations in the main ticketing hall yet, if you can stomach it."

"I'll head there soon. You know what, Ioanna, I don't know whether I'm more surprised that all this is happening, or that it happened and we're still alive."

"Give it some time," she said, and looked off in the direction of the triage center.

"I expected a more cheerleading attitude," Iskander observed. "Thought you'd command me out to the front, exhort me to the war effort. Most of all, I thought you'd be a general, holding court here with flocks of underlings and orderlies."

She laughed ruefully.

"This isn't a revolution with that many flunkies to spare. Lucky women that I am, I do have one, around here somewhere."

They paused in a dimly lit hallway, with the sounds of platform in one direction and metal cot legs squeaking on the floor in the other. Ioanna sat down against the wall and stared at a plastic carton.

"It all happened fast. Not like I expected it, however I expected it." Iskander took a seat beside her, looking at the floor near her feet. "Better, maybe, with Freeman. But he's dead now, I think. Went and blew Nova Prospekt into the sea and took himself back into history with it."

Iskander made a small, unidentifiable noise.

"The problem is, they nabbed Vance—one of more gifted of the Resistance brass—about the same time the doctor showed up. And now he's a hostage in the citadel."

"You all seem to get on well enough without them both," Iskander offered.

"Yes, I suppose they do at that." Another short advance by the walking walls outside. "Though I think the movement loses something without the geeky element in the leadership. Too many old soldiers and city comptrollers otherwise. I can't deal with the man in charge of the canals district. First he wanted to send me off somewhere foolish, like a conscript. And you should have seen how I had to harangue him to set up operations here, maintaining the rail supply lines and setting up support camps in the suburbs and foothills."

"What for?" Iskander asked. "The fight is here, and I don't fancy the chances of anything on two legs that doesn't have plenty of roofs to hide under."

"You wouldn't have asked me that if you had come in through the front door. There are too many wounded here. If a strider actually did turn up, or if a gunship realized that the roof is made of fucking glass..."

"You want to get them out."

"Since I don't seem to be good for much else anymore."

"Ah."

"Come on, Iskander. I need to log a few more itineraries in the control room."

Out on the platform, the test locomotive had already departed.

"It's headed out to a small yard attached to a petrol depot. If they have their act together, they should be hooking up some more cars so we can ship out some of the more stable patients. On flatbeds, unfortunately. We'll have to cover them with tarps."

"And there are hospitals out there somewhere?"

"Or something resembling them." They came to the stairs and felt their way up in the dark. "I can't believe how that modern major general tried to prevent me from setting this up. Comes the time we might all want routes out of the city."

Iskander shot her a look.

"Do you think we're likely to need them."

"Ha! Can't you see it, Iskander? Ion leading the humans out of town like rats following a piper." She kicked a plastic wrapper. "Truthfully, I don't really know. The Resistance certainly hasn't been routed, or even lost ground so far as I know. But I sit here in the control room, listening to every comm frequency we're on, and all I hear about is walls, walls and more walls closing. I think they're strangling us, breaking the city up into compartments and then sending in the striders and gunships to blast each little part. Could be, this whole enterprise runs out of steam and suddenly it's just a lot of hairless apes with a few broken ammo trains and the four days of food they stuffed in their backpacks."

"Would you like us to leave now?" Iskander asked. "Us two?"

She tried her best to look reproachful, came out with a passable expression, then couldn't find any words. Iskander changed the subject.

"So you have access to all the radio channels?"

"More or less. And everyone but certain hopped-up drill sergeants with delusions of grandeur listen when they hear the name Ion."

"I came from an aid station in a CP precinct east of here, and it's not really equipped... just one wounded medic..." He seemed to lose interest.

"I've been directing all casualties to this station for the past hour." She shrugged. They entered the console room with the broken ceiling. Ioanna's aide skulked in the corner, pretending to comprehend the readouts on the screen while clutching a clipboard. "What are you going to do, Iskander?"

"Go downstairs and eat, I suppose. I really don't know. Thought it was hard to live a week ago, now this damn place shoots at me every time I cross the street."

"You'd still like to leave, wouldn't you? Well, maybe I can sympathize for once. I gave these folks the keys to my city..." She lowered her voice. "And now all I can do is cool my heels, one warm body in the army of the species. I try to believe that they can succeed, do something to that damned tower besides bang their heads against it, that the rest of the planet isn't rushing down on us without enough synths to flatten everything. _Fuck,_ Iskander, they drained the oceans and we are shooting at them with Kalashnikovs!"

The other Greek in the room started looking suspiciously busy as he monitored broadcasts from the field.

"I know someone in the leadership must have had a plan at some point. Otherwise I don't think it would have gone ahead, rational PHDs and all. But now Vance is in the citadel and look at us now."

"I hadn't expected to come here and listen to you say what I was already thinking," Iskander murmured. "Goddamn, I'm tired..." He sat back against a metal desk, massaging the dark crescents beneath his eyes. "You are going to stay on here and carry out your work?"

"What else?"

"Good. It's a worthy cause." He caught her eyes. "Since you do lack for an army of flunkies, why not send me ahead on the next train to coordinate things? Even a lady with a radio station and a reputation needs representatives."

"And you won't just hightail it for the mountains?"

"I'm without all my riches, remember? I just want to stop listening to all this racket for a while. Too much like childhood memories."

"Then let me think just what..."

She stopped as Iskander held up his hand, suddenly alert.

"Turn up that volume!" He exclaimed. Ioanna's assistant complied, filling the room with the staticky voices of Resistance commanders.

_"Boyar-seven, be advised, the Prospekt cell vacated that block twenty minutes ago. Recommend find someone to cover your flank at the overpass, over."_

_ "Silo Command, Silo Command, Boyar-seven. We will need someone from the rear to plug that gap. How copy?"_

_ "Boyar, how about the Nedi_ć _group?"_

_ "Negative, negative, Commander Nedi_ć _pushed ahead through a set of roadblocks just now. We haven't reestablished communication with them yet, but the ammo carriers should be reporting back soon."_

"I'll be a—Ion! Did you hear that? Nedić!"

"Yes, what of it? They've been throwing his name around for hours."

"Mil-jan Ne-dić!"

"Well isn't that curious. Here I was aiming for you all along, and I manage to get your friend to turn Resistance by accident."

"I thought he cracked. Thought he died, really. Where were those broadcasts from?"

Ioanna jerked her head at the elderly Greek. He narrowed his eyes and answered in a thin voice.

"From the front line, such as it is. Out by Kubanski Plaza."

"I know it. Ioanna, are the roads clear to the south?"

_"Fuck,_ no, they aren't. Iskander, I thought you had a train to catch. The radio said _Commander _Miljan. He's fighting the good fight in an ocean of pissed-off Combine. What are you thinking of doing?"

Iskander paced out a tiny, agitated circle.

"Godamnit, I don't know what I'm doing. Like hell I want to run errands for you so I can get swatted by a helicopter—"

"I thought so." She chuckled.

"—and I can't mope around here. I know the whole plan this past week was to not die like an idiot, but I really can't think of anything else to do but go and find my friend. Maybe I'll bring him back and we'll all shore things up around here."

Ioanna smirked.

"I doubt it. But if you the two of you are both out there, I will feel right stupid for being in this funk."

Iskander was pacing a wider area now.

"But you said the roads are blocked. And they're almost halfway to the citadel with those walls everywhere."

"Alright, then, Iska." She smiled. "You remember when I told you two how there's no metro in City 17? Well that was only half true. There is, in fact, a subterranean north-south railway that leads downtown and, I suspect, right past the citadel towards to docks. I guess you could say it's my trump card when it comes to transportation. The best access is exceedingly well-hidden, east of one of the former Underground Railroad stations, and it should get you within a block or two of Kubanski."

Iskander stopped in mid stride.

"I honestly hoped you were going to dissuade me, not help me. I don't know what the hell I'm doing."

"Well I know what I'm doing: restoring your former usefulness. A certain psychological oversight of mine let it go to pot a while ago. I'll draw you a map."


	17. Chapter 17

Once again Miljan looked away from the hole where the door had been, and at his reflection in the puddle. A dull red mark still adorned his right cheek, the product of a night spent on a bed of gravel, face pressed to the sights and stock of a machinegun. He had even slept for three, perhaps four hours in that pose, and that bruise had appeared with the cold blueness of dawn. The mark remained with noon approaching, and it was the only thing that struck him as familiar in that oily slick of water.

A silvery splash scattered his image around the concrete interior of the parking garage. His mind said bullet, well-trained after a crash course of some hours, but there was no answering thump from the shooter's position. A bullet it was, however it seemed to have fallen from the ceiling. Given that the floors above them no longer existed, more likely it had fallen from the sky like a hailstone, launched by some overexcited or poorly-qualified insurgent kilometers distant.

"What was that?" The inquiry from the right flank was flat in tone, a dull, procedural request for information. Probably from dead-eyed Slavos or one of his two cousins.

"Nothing. Pebble."

"Fine. Still watching the west door."

So far as ranks existed, Slavos had held one, heading a small team before his command became mostly imaginary. He still worked with his taciturn relatives, and well, but did so under Miljan. The same went for a dozen others, less capable and not so steady under fire, but survivors of the first twenty-four hour cull. Commander Nedić was somebody else's idea, though. So far as Miljan was concerned, he charged into kill boxes and the various remnants of shattered squads followed behind him in a vague sort of unit. Or rather, they followed after waiting to see if he would be shredded before their eyes, as should have happened half a dozen times in the first hours after his disinterment. And once around eight bells, once more just after midnight, and maybe again this midmorning, but he still maintained that he had anticipated the gunship's flight path, so that one probably shouldn't count.

"If they don't try it in the next five minutes, we'll head out there. Slavos, you first this time, understand?"

"Aye."

The burning ember in his gut had faded overnight, no longer filling up his head with heat and insanity. It was easier to talk now, to remember to give orders. The youngsters behind him, watching the rear and the halls to east, were like a chorus of birds on a telephone wire, always singing out everything they say, heard or felt. Every black or white helmet that showed up would be declared and described in sometimes excessive detail, setting up a constant information exchange across whatever their position was. It was like no military practice Miljan had ever imagined or seen in movies, but it had started to become a weapon. That fay-looking American would read the reports in the air and find some previously unobserved path around the flank, to come at the enemy with his shotgun and homemade sabot rounds. Or the Moroccans, always getting their vowels wrong, bringing down the lurching Overwatch soldiers like dogs baiting bears. All the talking had developed out of nervousness, a struggle to keep calm and identify the multitude of strange sounds coming to them from out of sight, to convince themselves that death would not come unannounced. It broadcast their position and activities, but so be it. They fought on the strength of each other's voices, not courage, keeping the link alive as they shrank their ammunition supply and waited for the deadly among them to do their work. As foremost among the deadly, Miljan was now Commander Nedić.

"Friendly, moving left to check the front!" came the call. A grey figure made a blurry track across his peripheral vision, and Miljan's finger twitched. Another reason for the group's talkativeness was that it prevented them from shooting each other's heads off all the time. He felt the vibrations of striders in the floor, raised his eyes to the vanished half of the garage, and wondered if they should displace.  
'Force protection and avoid entrapment,' was the order from on high, as if Miljan was in the business of adhering to the command structure. No, he just advanced. Taking ground, as he had come to call his former quest for death under Combine guns. Now that he had people following him and his head was clearer, he picked his hopeless battles and made sure that Overwatch got their first shot at him, rather than Slavos or the others. An entire day of this, and the only mark on him was that little bruise.

"Theresa, watch my door for me." She nodded her ware-eyed Macedonian head and Miljan moved towards Arghun in a crouch. The gray-flecked Mongolian was Miljan's tactical conscience, his five years of experience sitting around on a Black Sea military base with a Russian mechanized battalion having improved with age, like wine.

"Do you think they could have missed us moving in here?" he asked in Russian.

"I can not imagine they would let that strider just pace around if they were aware of us. Those things work from their own script, flattening areas the Overwatch would rather storm. I think we can surprise them, or hold here safely."

Miljan nodded. Between Arghun and Slavos he was now familiar with the rebel way of war. Ambushes were the only engagements they could enter into with confidence of non-Pyrrhic victory. Almost every Overwatch tactic hinged on attrition, and if one could break up the cohesion of a unit with a sudden wave of fire, the armored trans-humans would let their numbers be ground down to nothing while they tried to reorganize. Of course, that indifference to individual survival could turn the tables when they staged their sudden rushes, supported by streams of pulse energy that wore away solid walls like water dissolving salt.

And striders were another story altogether. The only option was to fight from where they could not follow and keep moving to avoid being caught in the general demolition. So that was the game, creeping from block to block in search of Overwatch units, setting them up and knocking them down. Wherever the city became most like the warren that made up its eighteenth century heart, that was where the insurgents were strongest.

Getting across streets could be difficult, but the walking walls that were close to dismembering the rebellion also broke up all the major avenues, blocking the line of sight of Combine weapon emplacements. The worst part was trying to get through the walls in their new positions. That meant either creeping through the rubble that caught in their metal teeth or a nightmarish melee from room to room in occupied apartment blocks that filled gaps in the blockade.

Probably none of it would have been possible without the miraculous makeshift rocket launchers that could bring down the Combine's air support. Gunships now loitered at a set altitude if they appeared at all, dousing neighborhoods with inaccurate fire or making occasional daring rushes down to rooftop height. The drop ships barreled along even lower, trusting to chimneys and turrets and armor to shield them. He had heard that the launchers could even be turned on striders, if one's life was not regarded as precious.

Of course, Miljan's group had no such wonderful tubes, nor ammo resupply, nor medevac, nor reliable radios. Just a shrinking pool of weapons from a former century, constantly running dry and being replaced by the Overwatch pulse rifles. Though the ammo was plentiful, the AR2s were heavy, their angular metal contours unwieldy, and there were no sights to be had. Miljan's group found them of use in their frequent desperate slugging matches, a good tool for poor marksmen at close ranges and the only firearm guaranteed to scorch through Combine body armor and come out the other side.

The heavy tread returned to them, in threes as always. A strider's passing was just enough to make the bipod hinges on Miljan's weapon rattle. He was down to feeding the aged RPK with thirty-round magazines now, but had become reluctant to abandon it.

"So what do we do about that strider, Arghun?" He noticed Slavos' squinty eyes observing them from the corner, either waiting for orders or fuming at being excluded from the war council.

"That depends. What are they saying on the air?"

Miljan gestured for their flame-haired radiowoman to inch the volume above its current inaudible static purr. Arghun listened for a moment, and rubbed his nose.

"Sounds like they got entrenched back at the edge of the park. Kettering has a lot of firepower to call on, so that spells stalemate, thus striders. I think that tripod outside will get called up north soon, and we can move. Ought to know exactly what is out there."

"Good thought, that. Pssst! Slavos. Time for you to get up on the street and reconnoiter. Wait to see if that strider leaves, but if you think you can take a look now and stay hidden, it's your choice."

Unsurprisingly, Miljan's nominal second-in-command elected to go at once. He rose to his haunches, weapon at the ready, only to freeze and point to the group's rear. A headcrab had emerged from a broken pipe, waddling in their general direction.

_"Ne strelyaitye,"_ Miljan hissed, forgetting to switch back to English. He saw a long knife appear in capable hands, and turned his attention back to more pressing matters. Theresa was still covering the main entrance to the garage, so he got up and waited at the foot of the staircase for Slavos' report. A hushed gurgle from behind told him that the parasite had been dealt with.

"Nedić," came the whisper. "We're opposite that roadblock now. It's down a T-intersection, maybe fifty meters, some trees and a bus to mask our approach."

"And you are so sure that we plan on approaching?" He would, of course. Knocking down checkpoints was surprisingly easy, because Combine doctrine kept the soldiers manning the walls as they would in a riot situation. There were always dozens of windows and ways around, so unless CPs were present and resourceful enough to fortify the buildings on either side of the gate, the strongholds could be enfiladed. "See anything heavy?"

"Just one pulse turret, behind a shield. Buildings are three-story and stone along the whole street, no alleys."

"Sounds doable." Miljan stood and gestured to the group. "Just like last time, then?"

"Hold on, boss. I think I hear an APC beyond the checkpoint. An idling electric motor, anyway. It's a big swing gate, no particle barrier, so he can come through if we're spotted."

Miljan rubbed his chin. Civil Protection APCs posed a greater risk. His team had run out of the disposable 'Mukha' launchers the previous evening. Showering the chassis with AR2 rounds could work in a pinch, as could the pulse orbs, but it was a dodgy business. Maybe it was about time to hole up and send for resupply. He was convinced, however, that staying put meant being sniffed out, pinned down and blown up. Getting through a whole night unmolested had been something like providence.

Slavos' quiet cussing came down the stairwell to them, followed by the man himself.

"I think that strider's on the move. All its shield scanners came out of a shop window all at once and headed north. Almost saw me."

"Good work. Give that fellow a few minutes to stomp away and then we'll make a go of it. Can we get into the houses, do you think?"

"They'll notice if all of us go. I can get there with my cousins and we'll see what comes of it. But if there isn't an accessible yard or backstreet beyond, then that will be a lot of stone walls to bust through, especially if that APC rolls up outside."

"Right." Miljan turned back. That headcrab was still pinned to the floor by the knife. "Ammo check, people. Who has pulse orbs?"

"I."

"Out of 'em."

"I've got three."

"He has three because he's scared to use them."

"Then distribute what we've got. One per gun." Miljan waved at Slavos and his two shadows to get going. They knew what to do. "There's a checkpoint down the street, fifty meters. You four with the fireballs, move out the east door, get into the buildings and try to cover the road south from a second floor window. Old weapons, follow them, and whoever has just a plain AR2, stay hear and be ready to suppress the barricade. There's a pulse turret on top, so get back underground once they fire back. Slavos and the twins will be on the west side, and if that APC comes in for them, I want lots of hot holes in it. After that, move south under cover any way you can, and sweep the parapets, like always. Questions?"

No questions. He was sending them to a battlefield they had not yet seen with their own eyes, so how could there be questions? Only Slavos had to run out in the open, however, and Arghun would keep order here. The rest had been given the task of dashing towards strongly-built holes to hide in, and masonry was as good as courage.

That just left the question of what part he should play. Since he was apparently invulnerable, Miljan decided on observing the operation from the center of it all, in the street behind a bus. It was an easily-perforated piece of machinery, but hopefully adequate concealment.

"Arghun. Wait until you see the easterly group in position, then give Slavos the word. I'm going to be out front, and when I see them clear from cover, I will whistle. Then we will want covering fire."

_"Ponyal."_

There was half of minute of quietly running feet. Slavos et al had disappeared up the stairs, while Arghun marshaled his charges just below the lip of the ramp at the vehicle entrance. Was that strider really gone for good? Yes, he could hear the increased tempo of firing at the park to their north. That was a lot of Combine between them and anything resembling friendly territory, but this war had no front lines, just pockets of buildings and city blocks with basements and backyards.

Miljan crouched inside the easternmost south-facing pedestrian door. Sooty and gray as he was, his head probably blended perfectly with the backdrop of dark concrete. He felt the tender spot on his cheek and laid it against the smooth wood of his weapon's stock.

His head snapped upright as noisy streaks of blue-yellow burst from the roadblock's parapet, peppering the road to his right. Slavos must have moved early. Was he trying to rival Miljan for foolhardiness?

"Sho-ot!" The rippling thunder began inside the garage, and the short black wall ahead of them broke out with constellations of sparkling impacts.

"Shit!"

Miljan reached into his pants pocket for the one type of ordinance they had in abundance, a smoke grenade. He tossed it into the street where it rolled and stuck in a drainage grate. Two large panels began to swing outwards from the Combine position: the barrier was opening.

With a grunt, Miljan vaulted into his growing cloud of white haze. On the run through the blinding vapor, in a shrieking stream of pulse fire, he found the bus' rear tire and dropped flat. A bit of torn fabric near his armpit waved in the breeze. It could have been there before, or it could have been the grim reaper handing him a warning notice. The garage had fallen silent, now that it was being drilled into, and he had no idea where Slavos had gotten to, if anywhere. He peaked underneath the bus and saw an APC lurking just inside the gate. A damn good thing that Arghun had pulled back before becoming a target for its unerring rockets.

The first of their four pulse orbs sailed out from a window.

"No-o!" Miljan howled. They weren't far enough down the street; the angle was wrong. The energy ball hit the slanted metal of the launcher housing and deflected off, doing no damage beyond a white-hot stain. Immediately, much of the nearby facade seemed to repel from its own structure as the APC returned fire. Miljan hid his face in the ground.

Then more white smoke began pouring from the street at the foot of the Combine barrier. How Slavos had thrown the smoke grenade there he did not know. His second must have gotten close to the roadblock faster than he had believed possible. The pulse fire slackened for a moment, then an electric motor cleared its throat and the APC charged through the smoke. By some military miracle, every AR2 on the eastern side of the street ripped into its flank as it halted. The tires sprouted a dozen pinprick holes and then melted. The gunner's canopy soon followed suit.

"Arghun!" Miljan shouted. "Time to—" But the savvy Mongolian was already leading his people out of the west side of the garage towards Slavos' position. For the first time, Miljan's men were on the verge of getting to enemy before him.

"Moving up!" He moved down the center of the street, now that the parapet was almost entirely obscured. The southerly wind was blowing the smoke—and the stench of burning rubber—towards him. It began to smudge out the buildings on either side of the thoroughfare.

Rounds from the pulse turret shrieked past his head, hopefully fired blindly. He dove behind the useless protection of a lamp pole as the air seemed to quake and rattle around him. Then manmade weapons began to answer, directly above the checkpoint, and the incoming fire ceased. Miljan realized that his hands were stinging fiercely. He looked down and moaned at the sight of his ruined weapon. It had taken a hit to the chamber, splintering the magazine and mangling hammer and spring. At least it sounded like his gun would not be needed just yet.

Somewhere in the lonely tunnel of acrid smoke, there was movement.

"Slavos? Report!"

The only response was a dull clank as a Civil Protection gas mask appeared from the wrecked APC. Its driver hauled himself from the top hatch, looking shell-shocked. Miljan made a sound that resembled a wheeze and tore at his vest, fingers hunting out his sidearm. Too late he remembered that it had bounced into a canal the night before, and when he looked back, the CP was taking aim.

With only the vague notion that if he was not _doing_ something, he should probably be _thinking_ something, Miljan Nedić covered his ears, shut his eyes and waited.

The first shot was a double crack. He felt a swimming feeling, and when the second round shattered against the metal pole, he realized it was because he was pressing his hands into his head too hard. The third chuffed across the curb and skittered somewhere to the left, and the fourth came much longer after that, breaking a window. Miljan began to wonder if he could have survived after all. But the choice was made.

Bang! The fifth was the loudest by far, and it startled his eyes open. The driver was still standing there in shooting pose, his knees and arms shaking badly. Came the sixth shot, lighting up the pall of smoke with its muzzle flash. Miljan panted on the ground, one hand clasped around the lamp post so tightly his nails burned.

There were no more shots. Several hundred meters to the north he heard the barking of hundreds of rifles and cannons, but the CP crewman had bolted. Miljan blinked several times, then jerked into a sitting position and scooted away from the street to shrink against a building. His hands were shaking as bad as his attackers' had been, and the RPK's barrel was coming apart in his grasp.

"Alright, you fucking fool. No more chances." The city had ordained it so, meting him out the last of its improbable escapes with expressive finality. His teeth chattered with every distant gunshot.

Now he felt naked.


	18. Chapter 18

Iskander swept his hands across the smooth glass of the storefront beside him, trying in vain to wipe off some of the soot and grease. His quick passage through Ion's rail tunnel had ultimately devolved into a painful squeeze through buckled maintenance shafts. Although his shirt now sported something resembling cow spots, the third exit had brought him to a rebel listening post. As always, Ion's name was currency, and they had directed him to this occupied neighborhood to chase the tail of Commander Nedić's heedless advance.

Iskander rocked back on his heels as more gunfire sounded on the other side of the parking garage. A slow series of pistol shots made him look for cover did not change his guess that the rebels had come out on top. He waited for several seconds as the cloud of curiously white smoke rose up to the level of ruined parapet down the street. Yes, the Overwatch were noisier than this, so the squad he had been shadowing was still operational just up ahead.

Time to move, running noiselessly on his toes for twenty meters to the rear door of the garage. The inside was a barrow, and the light coming in through the broken roof just scrambled the shadows and confused his eyes. It seemed empty, though, and he could see movement in the thinning smokescreen to the south. So the fighters had overrun a walled checkpoint. Well, good on them.

His pace a bit more relaxed, Iskander felt his way to the eastern exit, where he could cross the street inconspicuously. He had no intention of wading into the pale cloud in front of the barricade, and picked out a covered alley just before the intersection. A few distinct voices came to him as he reached the opposite sidewalk, slowed before the corner of the dim passageway and—

A grey ribbon of movement flitted before him, topped with a face and as his ears sang falsetto his chest felt like a Combine thumper had come down on it, a thumper tipped with a railroad spike. Loud! Loud in his gut! He decided to sit down, and did so head first. Then people were screaming, softly compared to the blast a moment before, and the second loudest was him. Lots of swearing, first from somewhere beyond, then right above his head. And a large hand on his shoulder.

.

.

.

"Boss! Bossman!"

Miljan looked up and saw one of the Moroccans running out from the pockmarked barricade. He clenched his hand into a fist to stop the trembling and lumbered to his feet.

"Oy, someone find me a damn weapon."

"Nedić!"

Arghun now, from the other direction.

"_What? _A horde of gnats you are, _jebem ti bab..._"

"Commander, there was fire to self."

"The fuck is—"

"_Agon pa svoyim."_

The muscles in Miljan's neck performed a complex series of novel motions; his tongue expressed it less eloquently.

"Shit! Who?"

Arghun's face went blank.

"I—don't even know."

"Show me." He kicked aside the wreckage of his weapon and followed the Mongolian back towards the parking garage. They took the righthand corner and he saw the American with the unpronounceable name kneeling over a prone figure, his shotgun leaning against a bench. The barrel was still smoking, as each shot cooked off a little more of the black spraypaint its owner had applied.

"I think we shot a runner, because he's not one of ours."

Miljan skidded to a halt as the wounded man's bloody hand slipped out of the American's grasp. The scrap of pale fabric that was visible, the peculiar cast to the skin, it was Iskander.

"Arghun!" he barked, dropping to his knees and landing too hard on the bulging cobbles. He slipped into his native tongue, reciting something nameless from an incredibly distant past. _"'Oh, my oldest friend, when did we last part, and how? What roads have you traveled since then, and how have you kept yourself?'"_

Iskander's face was screwed up as if in concentration, with one corner of his mouth sucked slightly inwards. There was a spot of drool on his chin. Arghun's fatherly figure appeared opposite, so that there were three men clustered around the stricken form, and more members of the squad watching from the alley. His hands sized up the bloody crater in Iskander's torso with the elementary first aid expertise of two decades past.

Miljan looked up at the blankfaced American.

"What the hell did you hit him with?" he demanded. "A chainsaw?"

"Peace," his Mongolian subordinate murmured. "Esquevelle here hit him with the shotgun. But you can ignore all that mess on the surface; just a flesh wound from the sabot petals. What's inside is what counts, and that," he raised Iskander's arm and tried to peer underneath, "remains to be seen. Nu, hold him upright a little. He could be drowning."

"I mostly missed," Esquevelle said. "The wall caught most of them and I only hit him once."

"Twice," Arghun corrected, pointing to the fins of a small steel dart protruding from just above Iskander's kneecap. "Deal with that fellow later."

Miljan sat back, scratching at his scalp with one hand and massaging his bruised knee with the other. His eyes stayed fixed on the flechette that had pierced his friend's leg.

"A through-and-through shot," came the report," but not much bleeding. On the outside at least. Cut down to the bone near the right nipple, rib probably fractured."

"Duck..." Iskander muttered, the slurred syllable barely escaping his stony lips. "Fuck..."

"Iska! Keep talking, Iskander you old Turk!"

"I... talk your mother, piss—p... bal—jnish chetnik..."

"He is not in shock," Arghun observed. "Does it hurt to talk, comrade?"

"You THINK? Ha! Commandsher N-ye-dytch!" He opened his eyes, and said very clearly, "Ridiculous."

"Ridiculous is you!" Miljan laughed. "Showing up here like... like I don't know what and walking into a barrel!" Esquevelle fidgeted. "Listen, Iska, remember that dreadful story I told you about my father's friend in the old war? Five-four-five round straight through him? Nothing to show for it but stitches?"

"This... is... kind of like that?" Iskander asked, his voice now thin and weary.

Miljan looked up at what passed for his medic.

"...yes. Just like that. This crazy _pindos _here just put an actual dart into you. Don't look down now or you'll see one of the tiny things. Huh! I've gotten worse shots at the doctors, and they aim for the ass!"

"Not quite like a needle, though." Arghun's voice was expressionless. "There are two exit wounds here, so that means it broke in half on the way through."

Slavos appeared at Miljan's side with words on his lips, but the Commander waved him off.

"He is bleeding internally," Arghun continued. "Or I know he has to be. How much, is the question. Probably too much. I can make him comfortable. A few bandages, but little real need for them."

"You don't have that medkit anymore?"

"I do. But it is our last."

"And what would it do for him?"

"It isn't a full kit, but it has some gel. I can spay it inside the wound to help the blood clot, disinfect, dull the pain, and give him a jolt to make mobile. But it is our last, and—"

"Do it. And whatever else you've got in there too."

Iskander's face had resumed its contemplative expression, but his teeth could be heard grinding beneath his lips. Miljan recalled his friend mentioning his unusually high pain tolerance.

"Here, Esquevelle, I have his head. Go pull your flechette out of his knee there, or we rupture something. It might bleed a lot, but not enough to decide matters." Arghun looked up at Miljan. "A quiet casualty we have here. You know him?"

"Sure I do. He's the fellow that put me in the ground in the first place. Him and that crazy bitch with the nose. Isk-ander. What a time, what a time, to drop by."

There was a sharp bang from the south, and Slavos reappeared.

"Would you get _out _here, Nedić?" All traces of entirely voluntary subservience had left his voice. "We've got APCs and God knows what else coming in for their precious barricade. I've closed the gate and blown up the control panel, but I still can't say what floor everyone's on and if they can come around... Arghun, would you give that guy a Tylenol or write him off because I don't want to be the one herding this green lot about!"

Miljan snapped to his feet, suddenly all business.

"Good work on the gate Slavos. Get to the other side of the street where you were before and count cars. Try to remind our people about the pulse orbs as well. Arghun, get the casualty into cover." He caught sight of a dark head in a window above him and called up at it. "Theresa! Get me a gun! Any gun."

There were electric motors audible now. Nothing could be heard from the park to the north, which was either very good or very bad. He checked the corner and saw that the checkpoint's folding gate was closed, but with a meter-wide gap. He grabbed Slavos by the arm as he was passing by. Somewhere from the alley, Iskander let out a gurgling grunt.

"Not so much closed as narrowed, I see. Well, new plan. Get indoors on this side and rally everyone. You keep your kin and everyone who has a pulse orb and you ambush their APCs when they come. I will need maybe ten minutes after first contact." Miljan looked up at the gunship-speckled sky. "Send me the Moroccans, but tell everyone else to choose whether they stay here with you or come with me and Arghun."

"Come where?" The motors were growing louder and Slavos' face quivered with impatience.

"We are pulling back." He felt half a dozen other eyes on him as he said the words.

"Pulling ba—_why?_"

"We've pushed south far enough, too far without knowing how things stand at the park." Slavos looked as if Commander Nedić had spontaneously sprouted fairy wings. "And besides, now we have to find a triage site for the wounded."

"Wounded, singular." Arghun reappeared, fixing Miljan with a curious look. "And we have had wounded and worse before now. Ignatius, Jan..."

"And if anyone doesn't want to go, they can stay with Slavos. Anyone except you, Arghun. Don't argue if you please, lest this whole operation prove nothing but a goddamn pioneer outing."

"And you want Mourad and Zitane as well, Commander?"

"And the Moroccans as well, yes. Don't tell them about the choice part. I need someone else who can kill. Any questions, Slavos?"

"A round dozen. But nevermind."

"Well, you're in charge here from now on. Obviously."

"Do you have a rallypoint in mind, Nedić? Rendezvous time?"

"Nevermind that, damn you. What is this, the army?" Theresa looked positively hurt as she handed him a Civil Protection automatic. "And besides," Miljan continued, "nothing I say will be worth a fig three hours from now. So get a move on."

Slavos took off as if propelled, no doubt anxious to put his strangely changed superior behind him.

"Now then, Arghun, how shall we—"

The sidewalk at his feet erupted in a funnel cone of pale dust and fragments. Miljan hurled himself to the ground, or rather into a wall, as the familiar shrieking of pulse cannons filled his ears and the entire street sparkled and fumed with scores of azure impacts. The bellow of the diving gunship came moments later, and an earsplitting cacophony told them that the barricade was under fire now.

Miljan's subordinate had rolled out of sight with agility belying his age, but Commander Nedić stayed put. The onrushing gunship swelled and swelled in his ears; he ground his forehead into the tarmac as it became louder and larger behind his head. He covered it with his hands, trembled violently, then pressed his left hand to his ear.

The Combine machine pulled up, leveling off at five hundred meters as he remembered he knew it would. But still he remained prone in the gutter. The drone of jet engines was the city reminding him that he was out of chances. And now to get Iskander to an aid station, back across the deathscape he had traversed. Doable? Yes, maybe, but how many lives, a few of his own and a few of others, had been demanded for the first passage? It had taken more than a few hours; there was that terrible night and the bruise on his cheek.

Pulled from his womb, flayed by the light, freed from Grandmother, his waking rejection of the city had been scorned. He had pushed it as far as it would go, too far, and now his number was up. Retracing the steps that had seen four, five of his chances go by, and now with none to lose, it was an impossible feat. It would kill him. But maybe, maybe somehow if he could get poor inexplicable Iskander to safety, it would clear his debt.

"Nedić! First pass, Commander! They starting!" He looked up to see Arghun, flanked by the Moroccans. Theresa, one of the Romanians and the round-faced Finnish woman lurked in cover behind. "Commander, what are you doing still down there?"

Miljan moved guiltily upright, then had to reach down again to retrieve his submachine gun. He hoped it wasn't loaded with rubber bullets like many of the Civil Protection weapons.

"Thought I might take a nap, if you must know." He waved the weapon at the sliver of mountain that was visible over the garage's jagged roof. "There's the north, so let's get us there."


	19. Chapter 19

Left.

Hop.

Left.

Hop.

Left.

Stumble, and hop again.

Iskander took the offered hand, and once more laid his arm around a comradely shoulder. The man (a Romanian, he thought) took the weight off Iskander's injured right leg and the tripedal pair resumed hobbling in tandem.

His head lolled back and forth, neck limp, the better to watch the treacherous mosaic of shattered cement pass beneath their feet. His helper smelled of sweat and grunge and nitrate, some urine as well. Iskander's knee flared up in agony every now and then, rejecting contact with the ground and folding up on him, a sit-down strike. But he was more concerned with how his shirt stuck to his back in just one place. Whenever there was a pause in their progress, he would arch his spine to dislodge the gory adhesive and let the air flow over his skin. Then he could feel those two points (they sometimes merged into one) of sensation, a raw frosty feeling where the projectiles had ripped out of his flesh. Of the wound itself, however, an empty space going all the way through him, he felt little. It was a large absence in his chest, not pain so much as a constant uncomfortable throbbing, with a great pressure forcing in on it from someplace distant. He felt it in his jaw, somehow.

Miljan's Central Asian subordinate had said something about localized anesthetic, but it did not seem entirely localized to Iskander. When he held his breath and tried to concentrate on his surroundings, the city went all fish-eyed and faded at the edges. The hissing in his ears rose up sometimes to still the sounds of war, reducing them to shuddering echoes. It came in waves, though, and on the tail end of some unknown minutes in the dream-state, he would revert to hyper-awareness. Then Iskander acknowledged the street around him, the unbelievable overlay of trash that war painted across every surface shocked and frightened him. No longer fixed to the ground, he lifted up his head with the ache in his neck shouting at him to live and his eye counted bullet holes.

Now was such a time, somewhat extended in duration. He was growing sick of such consciousness, the more so because his ears were still buzzing so that the violence around him was muted. Left hop. Left hop.

The living crutch at right guided him through a performance that didn't need his participation. Iskander was somewhat unsure of his own presence, felt himself observing a slideshow of vaguely-relevant images.

First thing he could remember for certain was moving north under periodic curtains of gunship fire that plunged down from near-vertical angles. But it rarely came too close, as the blurry figure up ahead (recognized by his movements as Miljan) ran across streets in advance to invite attack.

After that a pedestrian market street, with headcrabs bumping into manikins behind shadowed storefronts. The scanners had come then, dropping hopper mines. A four-clawed explosive drone ended up sailing along the length of the group just above head height. It exploded behind them and plastered Iskander's shirt to his back with a gut-churning gale of pressure.

His next clearest recollection was a rocket attack. Before his eyes, shrapnel pierced Miljan's jumpsuit in three places, leaving tiny jagged holes in the fabric but no blood. His friend had jerked momentarily, then carried on. Only later did he notice the constellation of red pinpricks on his own forearm, dozens of bee sting wounds from what could have been flying glass or even sand.

A hazy period of time later, Iskander snarled and tore off his tattered shirt. The cloth tore at a sticky crust around his exit wounds and dislodged the bandage there. Arghun swore at him in fluent Russian _mat_ and had to re-dress it. Blood had saturated the gauze taped to his chest, and now a droplet ran down to his navel every few minutes. They said not to worry about it.

Three city blocks of gradually sharpening vision and aural clarity connected that last recollection to _now,_ when he realized that his breath was loud and ragged and that a cacophonous battle was taking place several hundred meters to the right.

"Some pissed-off fellows over there!"

"Who, our people or the Combine?"

"How many striders, do you suppose? They sure like to scream."

"At least four. But they've got the RPGs over there to deal with them. As close to a straight-up fight as you could want."

"Aye, we're under their anti-air umbrella now. Only reason the gunships quit diving on us."

"Then we should make friendly lines soon, if we can avoid that clusterf—"

"_Malchitye!"_ Iskander saw Miljan drop on one knee and gesture at something out of sight.

"If there _are _any friendly lines..." the Romanian beside him muttered.

An APC hummed down the street a few meters beyond their position. There was a chattering sound and few ringing impacts.

Miljan ran back to the rear of the group, crouching despite the buildings that covered them from every angle.

"Right then, we've got to the park already. Somehow."

Iskander's memory of their progress consisted mostly of a white-hot poker being jammed periodically into his kneecap, but come to think of it, they had done no actual fighting on the way.

"Somehow," he murmured in agreement.

"There's a lambda HMG in a tenement on the far side. I'd say three hundred meters of bare trees and open ground. I want us to move west—left—along this backstreet here until we can find a better way across. Keep cover between yourself and the north in case our people tag you that gun. Big difference between getting hit with a chopstick like Iskander here and taking a metal cigar to the face."

Iskander threw a weary arm around his helper's shoulders...

The atmosphere flexed, rippled, and Iskander knew what it was. He threw himself to the ground as a strider's pulse charge screamed overhead. The familiar slamming sound battered at his ears.

"Faaaugkhhh!" His knee hit the ground and the pain snapped his teeth together with an audible _crunch_. His scream was louder than the house collapsing near the park, a piercing shriek that drove the last cobwebs from his mind. Everything was lit up now; he felt the dust between his fingers, the bile surging in his throat, the terrifying blueness of the sky.

"Getup! Getup!"

"Strider!"

Every detail of the scene demanded his full attention. His eyes zipped from the each of the half dozen running rebels to the pieces of plaster that popped off the ground with every thundering footstep of the oncoming tripod. There were two holes in his back, his right knee wanted him to pass out, he was missing a toenail and nipple, and his left forearm had been sandblasted. At the moment, the pain was gone, but all of it rushed and swirled into his voracious senses.

"On me!" Miljan roared, and pushed ahead. Luckily, Iskander was already on his feet. He clapped an arm around the Romanian's shoulder and they loped off, twice as fast and half as awkward. The strider was not actually in sight yet, having fired at rebel positions to the north, but its shield scanners were greedily photographing the street as they weaved between satellite TV dishes. He counted forty steps to the corner and then a jog to the right. Twice as far again to go, and Miljan was in sight. How many paces to a meter in this curious three-legged dash? He heard his helper panting as they fell further behind, and Iskander blessed him silently.

The walking pulse cannon began its _whomp whomp whomp_, sending bolts over the rooftops. It had moved off to the left slightly, stopping just short of the boulevard ringing the park. Arghun took a shot at a scanner.

"Where to, boss?"

Miljan drew himself up straight, staring at the yawning green gulf that had trapped them better than any wall. Iskander's adrenaline-suffused eyes saw the trembling in his friend's fingers. During the momentary pause, another strider wailed on their right.

"Nedić!" The Mongolians face was full of something like rage.

Miljan cleared his throat, then simply pointed across the street. Iskander noticed a canalized stream bed, just over a meter deep, with only a trickle of water in the center. It slanted to the left, perhaps covering them from the strider in some small way. Towards the center of the park, his eyes lost it beyond an arch bridge. It could get them halfway, at any rate.

"Right!" Arghun turned and let out a hoarse shout. "Drop into the river! One at a time! You, stranger, follow us any way you can!"

Iskander disengaged from his supporter with a terse nod of thanks. A quick tap of his foot, and it was clear that his knee was having no part in this escapade. Already he was alone on the sidewalk, the rest of the group in mid-sprint towards the canal. He took a hissing, sandpapery breath, relishing the smell of the air despite himself.

_You are either about to die, or you are about to survive and look utterly ridiculous doing it._

For whatever reason, he imagine Ioanna watching and laughing. Then he lurched into the open, landed on his left foot to take off again. Every jump hurt his chest, but for the next few seconds Iskander was completely distracted by the fact that he was hopping on one leg through a warzone. And be damned if it wasn't a reasonably fast method of travel, crossing four traffic lanes in a matter of seconds.

Striders hooted and gurgled, but he didn't draw any fire. Miljan was waiting for him where the sidewalk dropped off into the culvert, and he hauled his friend bodily over the railing. They both landed in ten centimeters of riverine muck.

"Good show," Miljan croaked, spitting out mud. "You crazy son of a bitch!"

The stream was really more of a trench, with stone-lined walls affording hard cover.

"_Davai, tovarisch."_

They grabbed each other by the underarms and hobbled forward through the ooze.

"Keep going," Miljan called to his subordinates, but they were now far ahead anyhow.

"How long do you think?" Iskander grunted. His eyes glazed over as he fixed them on the buildings to the north. Death fell across that impossible distance like a curtain. "Five minute's brisk walk? Have a bit of a nap when we get there?"

His friend guffawed.

Amid the din of the striders and RPGs, Iskander picked out the low hum of a scanner, and his friend pushed him face-first into the slime.

"Stay d—"

Then there was more dirt in the air than oxygen. In the third second of the barrage, he recognized the shrill noises behind his head as stonework exploding. Pulse cannon fire poured into the streambed, piercing the ground behind the banks and bursting through into the channel. The two rats lay huddled in the tiny space that was protected, where the slanting fire could not penetrate soil and rock. Struggling to breathe, Iskander shut his eyes to convince himself that the streambed wasn't full of water again. The leaping, churning, boiling mud resembled a torrent inside a mountain canyon.

Miljan started shooting at the nearby scanner. His gunshots were utterly inaudible, but Iskander could feel the muzzle blast whip at his cheeks with hot air.

Suddenly everything was falling. The incoming fire had stopped, and metric meters of airborne sediment began to return to earth.

"Did you hit it?"

"I—"

Miljan peered above the lip of the canal and let out a cry of half-hysterical joy.

"There's Arghun and the others covering us now!"

He was right. Iskander heard the chattering of AR2s, and the strider shifted on its legs to pulverize the ditch farther ahead.

"Now, Iskander! You have to crawl!"

The mud around him quivered, and there was another set of tripedal footfalls on the street behind them.

"Move! Please."

Behind them. Iskander sighed, knowing that the second strider could enfilade the entire trench from its current position. Nevertheless, he pushed off with his good leg and managed to slither a few centimeters in the reeking swamp. Now for the right leg. He dug in deep with his toes.

_Pain!_

Iskander's limbs rebelled. He arched his back and shrieked louder than the war. Arms flailing, his knuckles smashed against a rock and he lay still, certain that the strider to the south had heard. The sooner it fired, the better, so long as he didn't have to try to use his leg again.

"Is-_kander!_"

Rough hands pinned his wrists together above his head and pulled. His eyes flickered open. Iskander couldn't tell if his bandages were still in place, since mud covered every centimeter of exposed flesh. But the strider at the head of the canal was slowly receding. And it hadn't seen them yet.

Now Miljan had overcome the suction of the streambed, dragging friend by the arms. A weightless feeling came over Iskander as he began to surf over the slippery ooze. Out of the aether, a memory of swimming in the Black Sea invaded his head.

"W-ware," he croaked. Miljan's head and shoulders were exposed above the bank as he trudged forward. Some bullets snapped overhead, but he could not tell if they were from Civil Protection or careless rebels. He tucked his left leg over the right to create less resistance and looked back to the south.

"Big walker's gone," he called. "'s moved off." And it had. He could not see the second strider any more, only feel it. Scanners swooped overhead, ignoring both men. Even as Miljan pulled him along, Iskander's bare back picked up the vibrations on either side of the stream. The synth tripods were advancing now, trudging north towards rebel positions. Miljan swore and grunted something about Arghun.

As the striders swept past, Iskander rearranged his arms so that his biceps pressed against his ears. The world did not get much quieter, but it did become easier to shut out. He fixed his eyes on the shining black peak of the citadel and let the stream carry him along. Miljan was a distant presence, nothing more than a tight clamp about his wrists. He was fed up with sensory overload and adrenaline. What need was there for it, now that his fate was in other hands?

Falling buildings, rockets, gunship rotors, synth vocalizations, firearms, citadel kalxons, it stil took considerable willpower resisting the urge to recognize and categorize every sound. He focused on his friend's panting instead. Miljan's rattling breaths were only slightly slower than his own heartbeat. How many beats in a second? How long to go yet? The canal had turned a corner of several degrees, and he could no longer see the starting point. If it really was three hundred meters across the park, this slanting route was only making it farther. Did Miljan tend to overestimate when judging distance? Or was he the one who did that? When was the last time they had ever known a measured distance for sure, anyhow?

A pair of feet entered his field of vision, wing-tipped shoes pointing at the sky.

"One of the Moroccans," Miljan rasped. "Torad or Zitane."

The body soon slid on past, and luckily the blood had seeped towards the center of the stream. Iskander wondered how much of the thick dark much was in his own bloodstream now, working inside the bandages.

There were branches overhead now, a lattice of naked limbs and twigs twisting between him and the gunships.

"Look," Miljan gasped out. The canal opened up into a round pond with reeds growing in the center. Despite the fighting all around them, choruses of frogs sang unabated. They had come perhaps halfway across the park, and the striders were stalking the far side, having demolished an entire row of stately buildings.

With shaking arms, Miljan hauled his friend out of the stream and into a cinderblock building that had once housed toilets and a concession stand. They both collapsed.

"Did your people make it?" Iskander whispered. Now that the painkillers and adrenaline had all run out, his chest was fast starting to burn.

"Possibly. They made it this far, at least."

"Shit..." He wished desperately for a moment of silence. Just a short span—fifteen, ten seconds—without this relentless hammering. "If I had known you were going to have to haul me across the whole city, I wouldn't have eaten so much these past weeks."

"And me, Iska, if I had known that the end of the fucking world was going to crack open my hideout, I wouldn't have gone underground in the first place."

"So that's where you were! Godamnit, if you wanted to hide, couldn't you have just stayed in the water tank? I could have traded you some alcohol for batteries then."

"Let's not talk about that, though. I had my reasons. I felt that my luck had run out, and the Nedić family has always been a good judge of that. Just like my luck is gone now, as a matter of fact."

Iskander guffawed.

"No luck! Have you been asleep for the last ten minutes? What do you call that then?"

"You were the one sleeping! Couldn't be bothered to drag your own bones, you lazy Turk!"

_"Tvayu mat, chetnik,"_ came the good-natured reply. Iskander got his moment of silence after all, even if it lasted only five seconds. "What's our next move? These walls feel nice and sturdy, and no one's likely to look for us in here."

"That depends on whether you're mobile or not. I don't have any more dragging left in me." Miljan screwed up his face as he flexed his shoulder and pushed out a piece of shrapnel. "Really though, it's just like you. Take a shotgun blast to the tits from point-blank and spend the next hour complaining about your knee like an old-timer." Iskander threw a rag at him. "Speaking of tits, is Ioanna still around?"

"Hold on a minute." The rat reached into a dim corner and pulled out a a large octagonal case of white plastic. "Shit, Miljan, how did we miss this on the way in?"

"Medkit? Probably empty."

"You can see right here that the gel container is half-full, you idiot. There's an ammo stash back here too, but it's all rifle caliber."

"Fine, then. You could probably use some touching up." Miljan took the medkit and fiddled with the latch until it popped open. "You look like a South Seas cannibal, by the way, with all that mud. And what the hell happened to your shirt?"

"You don't... Say, is that gel there going to make me go all loopy again?"

"Not if I only use half of it. Arghun gave you a shot of something last time. Hmmn... the bandage on your knee held up. I hardly see the point in putting another on your chest. You have half a swamp in the wound already, like a seal. They say mud is healthy, you know."

"How about when it's laced with alien toxins and urban pollutants?" Iskander winced as his friend sprayed pressurized wound cream into his knee. The substance was green and soupy inside its cannister, but came out as a white-colored coagulant. "Shit, those aren't doctor's hands. Give me that vial, I'll do the chest-hole myself." If he could find it in all the drying mud, that was.

While Iskander fumbled painfully with his would, Miljan stuck his head out the door.

"Wouldn't you know it, those striders are still trying to beat down those same buildings. Someone is giving them a hell of a time of it. That'll be Arghun, most likely. I wonder how Slavos and the rest fared..."

"Done," Iskander reported. "These things take effect pretty fast, right?"

"Sure. Give it a few minutes and then see if you can stand."

"What else is out there, besides some frustrated striders?"

"Lots of trees, and tall fence that could cover us from the west, at least."

"Most of the fighting is still to the east. And that route takes us right into those synths, right?"

"Stay positive, Iska. We can make it. You know why?"

"Because Allah loves me?"

Miljan snickered. "Well yeah, that and because anything is a better deal than that fucking creek."

"You're a few shades of mud shy of swamp monster yourself, true. Right, I'm going to stand."

Iskander slid up the wall using his good leg. With a clear grimace, he equalized his weight distribution and took a slow step. It took him several paces to reach the far side of the tiny room, and a pained gasp punctuated every one. He sat down on an overturned refrigerator.

"Fuck, I'd be better off hopping."

"Or rolling," Miljan observed.

"Funny."

"_Kurac._ Look where I'm pointing."

Sure enough, a green plastic wheelbarrow lay on a pile of flattened boxes. Iskander looked up at the ceiling.

"Why, oh why can't I be the dignified sort of war hero?"

"Out of us two, _you're _the hero?"

"Apologies, _Commander._"

Miljan stood the wheelbarrow upright.

"This really is the best thing going. It even has a solid wheel. Only conveyance in the entire city without a flat tire. Climb in."

"You're serious? ...only if I hold the gun on the way."

"Yes, yes, if we're attacked by a barn, you'll certainly send it packing."

"Shut up."

Iskander collapsed into the smooth roundness of the carrying bed, relieved to take the weight off his knee. He took the proffered automatic and looked at it somewhat askance. There was probably a safety latch... somewhere.

"Then lets do this. If you drop me, I'll just shoot you."

"Do your worst." Miljan dropped to the floor by the entrance and scanned the park outside. "The safety is on the left, near the trigger. Set it to automatic, or you'll have no chance." He grasped the wheelbarrows handles and hefted it to test the weight and balance.

"Take a deep breath, _chubak._"

"Sure you don't want to ask Allah for help after all."

"That would be nice, but Breen had him shot. Now run your ass off."

"Well then Iska, we'll just have to pray to Ion." Miljan kicked off from the wall and took the door at a run. The single wooden wheel made as much noise as the striders ahead of them, so there was no point being discrete.

"Allahuakbar!"

"Uraahhh!"


	20. Chapter 20

Their cries felt loud and strong in their throats, but the raging city swallowed them up. Iskander let out another, and fixed a strider in the burnt-out laser sight frame of his weapon. There were at least three tripods in the rubble ahead, weaving in and out of disemboweled stone buildings with their backs turned.

"So far so good," Miljan called out. Their conveyance was so abominably loud because the wheel was out of true, and made Iskander lurch in his seat with every revolution. The vibrations made the groundskeeper facilities pass by in a shivering blur, as if he was back on the morphine. As they approached the park's wrought iron fence, he accidentally squeezed off a round, but the muzzle report was just one drumbeat among many. Miljan did not even notice.

"Here we go!" the Serb bellowed.

They took the narrow pedestrian gate at a tremendous clip. Iskander jerked sideways as the left flank of the wheelbarrow glanced off a metal post. Plastic buckled and snapped, but somehow the mono-wheel chariot stayed upright through the entrance. With the street whirling around him, Iskander felt Miljan lose his grip on the handles, and the wheelbarrow plunged down two shallow steps. Hands at his back again, pulse cannon fire from somewhere unseen, and the ruin of a stone facade loomed overhead.

With a shuddering crunch and a scattering of white bricks, Iskander's vehicle finally came to grief. The last he heard from Miljan was a grunt as the wheelbarrow overturned and flipped him onto a pile of finely-crushed debris. He lay on his back, spine tensed and eyes closed, and in a few seconds the pain began its slow ebb. A small avalanche of gravel signaled that his friend had found cover nearby.

There was a strider almost directly overhead, howling every time small arms fire pecked at its knee joints. The fussilade that had rattled on for the past ten minutes was now but a few steps to the north. It had not increased in volume but in mass, a hot wind that poured in upon them.

"Iska! Can you move? Not safe!" Miljan's voice was garbled somewhat.

"Faakh!" Not that his own response was finely enunciated.

"You need to—hell, I broke another tooth!"

Iskander took a quick look around and felt validated in his reluctance to budge. The gutted frame of the building closed in on him with four comforting walls; apparently the wheelbarrow had thrown him into a collapsed staircase. Miljan crouched near the hole leading to the street.

He knew there was a strider just behind him, thrashing its way through what remained of the rebel strongpoint. If he were to roll over and look up, he would see it. But goddamn, did his knee ever hurt!

The submachine gun had reappeared in Miljan's hands. He shot down a clawed shield scanner as the strider's rear leg came down in the next room and created a billowing fountain of construction materials. An integrated cloud of fine dust, pebbles and intact cinderblocks descended on them.

"'Skander! Can... you... WALK?"

He only shook his head in response, and shifted his one good leg. With dull eyes, he watched a salvo of rebel artillery speckle the citadel's northwest flank, nearly catching a flight of gunships as they set out.

"I—" His friend's jaw was shaking, and Iskander guiltily wished that he could share this sense of funereal calm.

Crunch! The strider's leg descended again, but slightly farther to the west. Whatever loose debris hadn't fallen before, shook down now.

"Arghun!" Miljan screamed suddenly. There was a scrambling movement and when Iskander rolled onto his stomach, his friend had gone. He clawed himself up to the lip of the broken north wall and saw Commader Nedić weaving through the chaos, sprinting as fast as the rubble would allow.

The reddish glow of a rocket cut a smooth curve overhead and the strider staggered. It made a baleful sound, shaking itself like a wet dog. Then the tripod swiveled to face the source of the fire and dropped into an arachnoid crouch. A mixture of hydraulic fluid and mucus splattered on the rocks nearby. Iskander shouted out something formless as three things happened simultaneously.

The air condensed into a field of blue suction around the strider's cannon, another rocket burst from a row of second-floor windows to the north, and Miljan reached the crest of rubble-strewn ridge. The horrible charging turbine noise of the cannon made Iskander's chest quake, and he hid his head just as the second rebel missile spattered him with fragments. There was the radiant concussion of the pulse energy beam, the shuddering blast of deflagrating concrete. But the tremor that almost jolted him from his perch was not the result of the explosion, but of the strider's body hitting the ground just before him. Its three rounded legs jutted up into the all-obscuring dust cloud like snapped steel girders, and were still. A halo of residual energy still crackled blue around the muzzle of its belly cannon, sparking and flaring in a bed of disintegrated brick.

Somewhere beyond the haze, a building was collapsing piece by piece, and rebel cheers were stilled as another strider turned its attention towards the scene. A pair of shield scanners slid through the chaos like toys dangling from a child's mobile. Iskander ignored them. He stared into the smoke where he had last seen Miljan, holding his eyes open against the punishing sting of the dust particles by sheer will. There there was no wind, so the pulverized masonry hung suspended in the air, gradually settling downward to sheathe the ground in an airborne layer like morning mist. The ridge of debris revealed itself first, coming into view as the sun shown through the dust again. Blinking furiously, Iskander picked out a small shape that just poked over the top of heap. A bit of ruddy hair was all there was to see, but he recognized it.

"Miljan!"

Now the beating drums of two striders sounded in the wreck, their cannons harping on and on just out of sight.

"Get up! _Get up!_" he shrieked, and realized he was addressing himself. Iskander looked down at the mottled skin of his chest. The bleeding had stopped; down below the knee bandage was tearing lose again. He took three deep, hissing breaths. A cinderblock's smooth top offered a good handhold to his right. The gunfire reached a crescendo. With a squealing groan and a rushing feeling in his head, Iskander pushed upwards with both legs and stood. The pain made his vision pulse, and another cannon attack buffeted him with blast wind, but he gained his feet.

Left.

_Right._

He felt his kneecap grinding, but it was actually just his teeth.

Left.

_Right._

Fuck!

Left.

Now he had to climb down into a narrow crevasse, and could prop himself up with his arms.

Left.

Right.

_ You were impaled through the chest, you slackwit, why can't you pay attention to that and ignore the damn leg?_

Left.

Right.

He pulled himself up onto the smooth hull of the dead strider, hands slipping in the leaking bio-mechanical fluid. The incongruous exhaust grating singed the seat of his pants. Iskander slid down the opposite slope of the clam shell corpse and skidded to a halt in the concrete scree. His knee hurled abuse at his brain, chiding him for such a sloppy landing. A few moments to bite back the ache and sting, and off again.

Left.

Right.

Now he was on the ascent. Both striders still masked by some buildings and just three meters more to Miljan.

Left right.

Left right, faster now and down, draping himself across a jagged array of broken blocks. He reached out, tilted Miljan's head to the right and looked into his friend's lifeless eyes. Only then did Iskander notice the ozone-tinted odor of charred flesh, and see that Miljan had no leg on the right side, just ten or so centimeters of thigh and a blackened stump.

Iskander let out a gurgling sound and dropped his head into the dust. His eyelashes brushed against the splintered ground in the welcome darkness, as the striders howled on and on. The scanners saw only two corpses, one on his back and dismembered, the other face-down and spreadeagled. He reflected that in an hour or so, they would notice that his body wasn't going cool. So maybe he had until then. And the rest of humanity had maybe three days until the water and ammunition ran out. He wondered what Ioanna was doing.

Then something bit him. He thrashed with his arms but there were teeth clamped around two of his fingers, and a shallow panting sound. Miljan's head had moved slightly, and was now holding on to Iskander's extremity with quiet desperation.

Iskander whooped and scrambled over the crest of the rubble ridge with something like a somersault. His friend's eyes met him on the other side with a baleful stare. He opened his mouth, but the war stole the words and he could not tell what they would have been had they lived. Miljan gave a shudder and his head rolled back, but Iskander could see a thick vein pulsing in the Serb's forehead.

He slid down the incline and scanned the detritus for his friend's missing foot. It was nowhere to be found. The leg had not been severed, but vaporized, perhaps from a glancing blow by the pulse charge beam. He realized with a sudden surge of hope that the wound was almost completely cauterized. The flesh was ready to slough from his melted femur like charcoal, but only Miljan's inner thigh was actually bleeding.

To hell with the scanners.

"Arghun!"

Pulse cannons pounding away, now and forever.

"Arghun! You flat-faced bastard, can you hear me?"

He had not actually seen a rebel in twenty minutes. They were in deep cover, only emerging to fire rockets.

"Shit... right then. My turn."

The stricken rat was too bulky for him to ever hope to carry, so he seized Miljan by the armpits and tugged him down from the ridge. None of the wreckage was sharp enough to do any serious damage, but if a pointy bit of concrete woke him up by jabbing someplace sensitive, all the better.

Miljan's stump left a black trail of ash for a meter of so, but the wound had stopped shedding by the time they reached ground level. Iskander found himself in the crater of the cannon blast, or the half of it that had not filled up with the collapsed upper stories. He looked at his friend—who was stirring again—with a triumphant look, but they had yet only crossed a single room. Eventually he would have to stand up again, and it was half a kilometer to Fugee Freight, with all intervening rebel strongpoints potentially nothing but dust. Ioanna's tunnel was around here somewhere, but it would be impossible to get through the collapsed portion dragging a casualty.

The strider's blast had made the floor give way, and Iskander gazed down into the exposed recesses of a dingy basement. It looked safe, but he had no idea how they could both land on just one foot, and there was no indication of a way out.

"Miljan. You awake again?"

"...piss..."

"I know you pissed yourself. Now listen, I want you t—"

A headcrab shell slammed into the street outside, shrapnel from its preliminary impact charge kicking up dust on the wall above their heads. Another cannister landed seconds later, and Iskander could hear the wailing of dozens more on the way. They were strung out in a arc leading from the launcher in the citadel, with the afternoon sun reflecting on each one.

"That's it!"

He heaved Miljan's unresisting form into the cavern footfirst, straining to hold on by the arms and lower his friend as far as possible. It meant bracing himself with both legs, and the pain in his knee made his stomach boil.

"Good!" Miljan managed to cough out, and dropped.

He heard a muffled thump, a stifled scream and the Serb called up,

"I'm okay."

More canister impacts.

"Okay, are you? I don't know why you're even conscious."

Something like a laugh came up from the basement, and for a moment Iskander forgot his knee, his chest, the headcrabs swarming over the walls, and the fact that he had no way to land safely. But the cellar floor was already rushing up at him. His left leg took the blow and he managed to roll without too much contact to his injured limb. That pain wasn't enough to make him swoon, at any rate.

"I think you're in better shape than I am," he told Miljan, who was nevertheless looking like a man locked in the staring contest with the devil. His friend's jaw had a remarkably determined set to it, but that may have been to avoid looking down at the leg that wasn't there.

The basement contained a large printing press from an earlier century, a few bookshelves, and the rest was rows of filing cabinets and document boxes.

"Gun," Miljan spat out, lying against the wall in a lethargic pose. Every now and then a headcrab squealed.

"Lost it." Iskander slid himself across the floor to a closet. "God bless janitors," he breathed, finding several mops and a broom. "We've got crutches now. Spears if you want to get crazy."

His amputee friend was painting cyrillic letters with the blood from his thigh, eyes closed. Iskander read the unfinished word on the wall.

"Don't sweat it, Commander. You can leak like that all night and still have rosy cheeks in the morning." He tucked the plastic bristles of the broom beneath his forearm and swayed to his feet. "Fuck, that don't half sting. I'm going to look for a way out. If a crab jumps down here, bang on this pail."

"You... telling me, t-to kick—the bucket...?"

"Seems like you couldn't even if you wanted to."

With that manifestly untrue remark, Iskander shouldered his crutch and hobbled down a row of steel shelves. In the gloomy south end of the cellar was a rubble-choked staircase and a corroded set of double doors. The rust gave off a faint glow, which could only be sunlight shining through where the metal had worn thin. He leaned on his broom and mentally gave Allah his due, just in case.

The headcrab barrage had brought near silence up above, and none of the parasites had yet found their way inside.

Iskander tugged on the handle, causing the latch to snap in half with a noise like a gong.

"There goes the dinner bell." He tried to call for his friend, but the breath caught in his throat. After several second spent hacking and spitting up discolored mucus, the pain gurgled back to life in his chest. Had he been living on borrowed time this past hour?

Left hop, left hop, left hop, back to Miljan.

"Look alive, Nedić, someone's coming to collect."

"You... outa lifes too? Am on—seventeen."

"Cute. Here, hold onto the broom and I'll drag you."

Seven painful meters to the exit. With the handle broken, one of the doors had swung open on its own, perhaps shaken loose by strider footfalls. Iskander left the Serb sitting in the shadow of a filing cabinet and stepped over the threshold.

A short flight of steps led up to the street level sidewalk, a few centimeters above his head. Some nearby headcrabs caught a burst of submachine gun fire as he peered up at the skeletal buildings. The shattered facades were all that he could see, and it made the stairwell feel deceptively safe. He disabused himself of the thought by listening to the slow tread of the strider, and felt the pressure tightening around his lung.

"Anything?" came the faint inquiry from the basement.

Really, why _was_ he conscious?

Iskander crawled up the steps to survey the street. Even as he peered over the lip of the stairwell, he heard the whirring motor and knew that he should have dropped back out of sight. But his bad leg was in the way, and as the APC idled around the corner, he was head and shoulders above ground and exposed. He froze, and in those moments of pitifully suicidal inaction, he had time to reflect that it was the first time he had done so. This whole war, he had been doing so well, and now...

Screaming, shrieking AR2 fire overhead, but not from the armored car. What sounded like an entire platoon of pulse rifles tore through the APC's upper works. Its rocket exploded in the launcher, tearing open the crew compartment, and the vehicle bumped lifelessly to a halt in front of the stairs. Just as Iskander was about to let out his breath, both rear tires burst.

The strider on the opposite side of the building let out an angry retort and sprayed the street with cannon fire, but the sidewalk was in cover. Rebels appeared from right, led by a familiar voice.

"Hey! Strider bait!"

Iskander recognized Arghun's grimy visage with something like a sob. The depth of his relief made him want to pass out, but the buckling of his right lung could also have explained that. A rebel RPG team brushed past to find a new firing position.

"This one's not going down so easy, is it?"

Arghun dropped to one knee and helped Iskander onto the sidewalk.

"Is the Commander with you?" His flat voice had little curiosity in it, and even less hope. The rat was happy to surprise him, pointing down into the cellar as he sagged against the nearest wall.

He remained conscious; he was sure of that. There were simply a few lean seconds that slipped away from him, lost between the slow flutterings of his eyelids. They had brought Miljan up to the street now, unconscious and slowly bleeding.

"Dead?" someone asked.

"No," Iskander rasped.

"Close enough, then."

"No!" he repeated. There was a balloon in his chest, an expanding balloon that nevertheless crushed down on him, hammer-like. The brick was rough against his palms and the motor of the APC was still running.

"F-fugee Freight. Arghun. Put him in the car and help me up." Those words took a lot out of him.

Arghun scratched his head.

"Are you suicidal?"

"You said... he's dead anyhow, r-right?"

"Nevermind Nedić. "Arghun knelt and took Iskander's pulse. "How does your chest feel?"

"Feels shit."

"Can you breath? Say a few sentences?"

He just coughed.

"Your lung is collapsing. All the exertion must have torn open the flechette hole and I don't have anything to relieve the pressure."

"Fugee. Freight. Ion. _Pozha-pozhalista, brat._"

Another headcrab cannister shattered an enclosed balcony down the street. Arghun jerked his fist at Theresa and the remaining Moroccan.

"Maybe you're right, strider bait. It's a fool's errand but you're both about to die on me and I've got a tripod to kick over. If you can drive that wreck, best of luck to you."

They loaded Iskander into the ruined rear compartment.

"But do you think you can stay conscious for a kilometer's drive or so?"

Iskander cleared his throat and choked out,

"Only half."

With the growing lightness in his head, it was hard for Iskander to tell whether he walked or was carried to the vehicle's armored flank. The riddled corpse of the driver slid down the black panels to the pavement, coming apart along the way. Iskander seemed to sink into the gore-spattered cavity of the driver's station, a wheel and two pedals the only familiar controls. His friend lay in back; Arghun rapped his fist against the chassis. The machine gave a deep, shuddering hum as he touched the gas, still strong despite all the damage.

"Hold on," Theresa called. He heard a hissing noise outside, and a yellow mist floated away in the slight breeze. "Now you've got your colors flying. Godspeed, boss!"

"Not much of a lambda, is it?" Arghun's voice was getting farther away, but the vehicle wasn't moving yet. "You'll never make a—" The strider's renewed assault drowned out all voices, and Iskander punched the accelerator.

Several seconds of awful grinding and thrashing as the rear wheels spun the rest of their tattered rubber into the air. Then, with Iskander's teeth chattering and Miljan thrashing around in the back, the front tires bit into the cratered surface of the street and the APC hurtled forward. Dragging the naked rims along the pavement, the vehicle was pitched backwards so that Iskander could only see the rooftops ahead of him, navigating by the tram lines. Their stricken vehicle made a noise like scrap metal being thrown onto a table saw, but the pair of striders simply watched it pass. The more distant tripod took a rocket to the legs as Iskander made a hard right onto Sevastopol Avenue. His reflection in the polished instrument panels was turning blue, but there were just meters, oh so few meters, to go.


	21. Chapter 21

Ioana skipped across the tracks, reaching the opposite platform just as the Number Six razor train (recently liberated) shuddered to a halt. The Nova Prospekt rail link was almost entirely inbound traffic now, shipping in ammunition from the Russian-built military base to the east. It had been humming with rebel freight ever since eleventh hour repair had reopened the canals track.

She turned her back on the munitions-laden Combine train and pushed through a crowd of lightly wounded equipment handlers. Now that she had worked the last kinks out of the automated rail network and demolished the final vestiges of security features, the station was under military control. Not only was she no longer needed, but the new crop of lambda overseers were entirely capable of pressing her into service unloading crates.

The maze-like queue of chainlink fencing had been flattened by angry citizens, and she bounded across it into the station's waiting area. There were no casualties there, but the main hall was still teeming with the wounded. They filled the hot air under the vaulted glass ceiling with moans and echoes, waiting to be sent north on the Vitosha Line. The stench rose with the temperature. At least her assistant had returned to his place on the general staff of the Canals Commissariat. They were welcome to his borderline competence.

"Ion! Walls moving!"

She was brought up short by the address, and peered at a uniformed, Middle Eastern woman with something like recognition. Ah, right, she had told them to keep her informed.

"Copy." Ioanna jogged through the blood-slick circus that was the main platform and made for the vestibule. If the walls advanced much farther, it could be time to use some of the newly-arrived mining charges to knock out the relocation mechanisms.

She arrived behind the set of ornate windows in the station's western tower and looked out through the missing panes. The yellow bulk of the Terminal Hotel cast its deepening shadow well past the monument at the plaza's midpoint. Rainclouds were massing behind the citadel, the fiercest weather the anemic currents of the Black Sea could muster. Judging by the quickening breeze, it could be upon the city before sunset.

But the walking walls were still. A narrow set of panels hung poised in the air like the forelegs of a mantis, likely what her watchwoman had seen. That behavior was new to her but—wait...

Just as Ioanna detected a persistent hum in the air, the small rear section of barricade lifted skyward. Metal teeth disengaged from the cobbles, ripping out of their craters amid swirls of dust. She ducked behind one of the dirtier windows, waiting for Civil Protection to come charging through the gate that had appeared in the wall. Where the hell were the rebel pickets?

An APC—or rather a two-wheeled bullet-riddled sledge—struggled out of the dust. As the gate closed behind it, she picked out the large lambda done in yellow spraypaint. Someone in a window nearby shouted 'hold fire,' and the armored car sagged to a merciful halt abreast the obelisk.

The war clamored on to the east, south and west, but nonetheless in the the plaza there was quiet. A few outriders of sea breeze reached her cheeks, bringing the scent of burning and news that the rain would be upon them sooner than expected. She hesitated by the window's broad marble sill. Ioanna had herself instructed all personnel to stay out of the plaza, so that the triage site could remain concealed. Now the Commissar had adopted her order, and enforced it religiously. But really, to hell with him and his canals.

She vaulted through the broken frame, her boots carving the pavement with glass fragments. Three gunships floated above, but their attention was focused on the fighting to the south, and there were no scanners in sight. The pavement crunched under her feet as she broke into a run. Her footsteps made a whisking sound in the layer of dust that now coated the entire city, a film in some places and and a blanket in others, but always there. The front right tire of the APC was deflating even as she approached, speckled with tiny pulse fire cavitations like the rest of the chassis.

"Ahoj! Anyone alive in there?"

She took a high step onto the boarding platform, only to snag a pant leg on a jagged piece of distorted metal.

"Hello? Shit, who taught you to pa—"

Isander's discolored face peered up at her through the frosted wreck of the canopy, an angry red hole in his chest and blood all over the seat.

"Medic! Medic now!" She tried to haul the hyperventilating rat from the driver's seat, but he resisted, hanging on with his left leg and gesturing animatedly to the south. "The hell are you—Iskander! Talk to me!"

He managed a pained croak in response, now banging his head against the seat to indicate the rear of the vehicle. She took his meaning and stuck her head into the ruin of the cargo compartment.

"Nothing there."

Iskander sagged, closing his eyes. Two field medics had appeared, and he offered no more resistance as they dragged him from the vehicle.

"He looks like he's been buried alive in a swamp," Ioanna exclaimed. "And then spat up by bullsquids."

They ignored her, chattering amongst themselves about chest wounds and respiratory blockages. More mountain rebels with no grasp of city folklore. She gave the APC a useless slap as Iskander was carried away on a stretcher, and for some reason did not follow. Wind swirled down from the rooftops, and the breenscreen's electrical wires danced. Someone had shot out the speakers a day earlier, but it still played static from time to time, offering single-frame glimpses of a graying man with desperate eyes.

Ioanna kicked the nearest tire and shuffled towards the shadowy front window of a souvenir shop. She cast a reluctant glance at the station, thrust her hands in her pockets and—

_"Oj!"_

She whirled around.

_"Kučka!" _The voice again. It called from the base of the wall. Yes, there. A figure lay in the shattered ground, in the narrow space between two of the barrier's blocky dark teeth. Only he wasn't lying, but crawling, pulling himself glacially forward with his arms.

"Christ! Is that... _Miljan?_"

The Serb flattened against the pavement, exuding relief.

"Aye. Dumb shit dropped—me. Drives like... gr-r..."

"Medic!" she called again. "We've got another one here! Hang on there, Miljan, you're a little big for me to carry, but they'll be back."

"I... l-lighter now." He flashed a broken-toothed grin, but his eyes stayed dim.

"Oh J—" She saw what was missing. "Why are you alive?"

He whispered something and sniggered, a private joke.

Only one of the medics returned. They rolled the maimed Serb onto the stretcher and Ioanna carried the back end, staring at the incinerated trunk all the way across the plaza. A little piece of pure white bone peaked out from the mortified gray and black, and she flexed her sides to keep down the bile.

Just as they crossed the threshold into the station, a blast of wind and rain lashed at her back. Cold water ran down her spine, through her sleeves and onto her wrists. The dust that coated Miljan's stricken form caught the wave of vapor and melted away.

"Hey... Champion Rats... I 'an see yer bra."

She shot an incredulous glance at the casualty, then laughed despite herself.

"I really should have given the power plant job to someone else, shouldn't I? But Iskander brought you back after all, Commander Batshit."

"_Kurac. _I—him, brought? Still... smart Turk."

The rain on the glass roof was an immense sound, a natural drumroll that stifled the hospital noises and plunged the expansive hall into luminous blue shadow. The medic up front maneuvered the stretcher towards an empty cot, and off to the side she could see nurses piercing Iskander's chest with a needle.

_An even chance,_ she told herself. Dropships passed overhead, buffeted by the wind.

.

.

.

They carried him into the middle of the car, calling him 'Commander.' What a farce. The seat was unspeakably comfortable, however, with a rag pillow for his right leg (or the morphine-dampened mummified ache that remained of it). All was dark outside the window, but he could hear the slackening rain clean summer's grime from the glass. Ioanna and Iskander were talking about the storm as they returned from the observation platform at the train's rear, he with his crutch and she with her broken nose.

"I'm telling you, Ioanna, it's clean."

"You can't possibly know that without filtering it."

"It doesn't smell, and that means a lot. I've been gardening all year, remember? Here, Miljan, tell me what you think."

He opened his eyes as Iskander held a small cup of rainwater beneath his nose.

"I already know you're toilet-trained, Iska. No need to show me."

"But it doesn't have that tang to it, don't you agree? No pollutants in it."

"Iskander thinks the storm wins us the war," Ioanna explained.

"I think it gives them another few days in the fight. What are you, playing at pessimist now? You told me yourself, they've been shipping in ammo and food but no water."

"Perhaps. I'll believe it when I see you drink it."

Miljan was tracing shapes in the fogged window. The vibrations of the cars were different from that of the steam-driven train he had once ridden, so long ago, but the feeling was the same.

"And please don't drink it," Ioanna added, climbing into the row of seats.

"Fine." Iskander joined them, favoring his re-dressed knee bandage and secondhand smock. "Let me tell you, it's a wonderful thing, being able to breathe. I even managed to sleep all evening in that charnel house. What time do you think it is, almost first siren?"

"Wrong," the Champion of Rats declared. "We don't use sirens anymore. Only sensible order the Canals Commissar issued." She reached into a pocket and retrieved an analog wristwatch.

"The hell is that?"

Miljan snorted at his friend's ignorance and cast his gaze out the window, where nothing but illuminated smoke trails and muzzle flashes could be seen.

"It's a prewar timepiece. When the short hand points at twelve, it's ten sirens. Or five, if it's day out. A more complicated system, overall."

The rat took the watch and examined it doubtfully.

"I always thought that those number wheels were just store signs."

"Learn to use it. There's no sirens where we're going."

"And where's that?" Miljan's voice was sullen.

"Up north. In the foothills where they've got a rail depot with air defenses. Or more importantly, a real hospital with doctors instead of those hacks." Iskander twitched at the word. "They'll pump you full of drugs so your leg doesn't rot like a side of beef."

"And have they a veteran's home there too?" Miljan turned his head towards the wartorn night, his jaw quivering with something like anger. "Iskander, if you put a hole in your breather dragging me out of that mess, then I'm sorry, because you wasted your time. You know where we live; there's no nice government man who sends you a check so someone can push your wheelchair around. I can't live like this, not even for a week." His voice had risen in volume, and more of his nasally accent entered his speech. Those passengers who were in too much pain to sleep craned their necks, but Miljan kept the back of his head to Iskander and Ioanna, wishing the reflection on the inside of the windows would go away.

The train lurched into a westward curve, and the greenish glow of the citadel pulled into view on the left. City 17 was receding. Her city. Let the rebels have it. There was more work to be done up ahead. Ioanna felt bloodshot eyes upon her.

"That's true," she stated. "An amputee like you is as good as dead."

Miljan made no reply, and she steeled her voice.

_ "...But only if we lose." _She snatched the wristwatch from Iskander's hands and brandished it. "Tonight I tell you it's 1:44 in the morning, the time you read off the wall of your childhood bedroom when you woke from your nightmares_. _Give me a few hours, and I will tell you the month, the day of the week in the language of your fathers. Just you wait and find out what else we will take back by tomorrow."

The train hit a kink in the rails, and their car made a vertical jump that rattled the seats violently, setting off groans from some of the wounded. The tension in Ioanna's legs carried her upwards and she remained standing when their course resumed its former smoothness.

"If we win..." she addressed the entire car now. "Oh, by dead Freeman's glasses, if we win! Then we'll see what your right leg means. And if we have to carry you ourselves, we'll see it through, and you'll see where and how we live tomorrow!"

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The End


End file.
